Flanders woman defies odds after car crash

Doctors offered all kinds of superlatives to describe Lori McLoughlin's recovery from the catastrophic injuries she suffered in an April car crash in Flanders.

But it was her daughter who best framed the unlikely survival of the 61-year-old Flanders resident despite a lacerated spleen, torn colon, the loss of the lower part of a leg and a severely damaged liver.

"I went, in 11 weeks," Christine Turner said, "from looking into funeral arrangements to finding a rehabilitation center for her to be released."

Turner spoke Sunday afternoon from Stony Brook University Medical Center, where McLoughlin awaited a discharge that the staff called remarkable. When admitted April 2, she was given a 12 percent chance to live.

McLoughlin received 50 units of blood in the first 24 hours. Her abdomen remained open for a week as surgeons fought swelling and infection. She was in a medically induced coma into mid-May.

"The majority of these people don't even make it into the hospital," said Dr. James Vosswinkel, a Stony Brook trauma surgeon and the hospital's surgical intensive care director. "And the ones who do, die."

McLoughlin was a passenger in a friend's SUV, returning home from her job as a Riverhead telephone operator, when the vehicle veered off Flanders Road. It struck a parked box truck.

Vosswinkel said the SUV was traveling close to 50 mph when it hit the truck.

"The injuries she suffered were incredible," Vosswinkel said of McLoughlin, who was wearing a seat belt. The driver, John Mackey, was hospitalized with serious injuries.

Turner recalls driving past the crash scene -- seeing the SUV's crushed right-front side -- on her way to the hospital where her mother had been airlifted.

"It's one of those things that you look at, and think, 'This is bad,' " said Turner, 39, who along with her sister spent nearly every day at McLoughlin's bedside. "It was unreal how good everyone was here."

She credited the quick, decisive actions of medical staff, from trauma surgeons to nurses, with saving her mother's life. And the relationship between the hospital and the family was evident Sunday.

Vosswinkel playfully needled McLoughlin about how often she had bugged him to go home. McLoughlin joked about not having to cook and clean anymore.

"I told you she was feisty," Turner said with a smile, turning to Vosswinkel.

"I took those 12 percent and I went with it," McLoughlin said, rising slightly in her bed as she pumped her fist for emphasis.