M20 — May 2012 — Miracle in the Cornfield

Intro: All things happen for a reason. You've likely heard that before. Well, here's a story that takes that saying to the extreme. The man you're about to meet suffered what, by all accounts, would have been a fatal farm accident. But the tragedy triggered a chain of events that many call a miracle in the cornfield.

"I probably should have died right there."

It happened in the heat of summer as Nick Leibold mowed a field on a farm that's been in his family for four generations.

"This is the fence here that I backed into with the tractor and chopper. A piece of that wire came off and hit me in the back."

It spiraled through Nick's body, ripping holes in vital organs and puncturing the vena cava, the main vein in his abdomen. What wasn't evident at the time was that Nick was suffering massive internal bleeding.

"I could see him lying down there in the waterway."

Aaron Blatti passed by on his tractor moments after the accident.

"I looked a little closer and I could see a blood spot on the back of his shirt."

Aaron's call for help began the series of event s that would save his dying friend's life.

"I was really concerned that Nick had been shot. That's what it looked like to me."

"That was my first thought that someone shot Nick."

Nick's wife, Kendra, and emergency medical technicians arrived within minutes. So did a white-haired stranger in a brown van.

"It caught my eye because it had absolutely no dust on it."

Even though Nick was in and out of consciousness, he remembers the stranger.

"I remember him coming over and standing beside me and saying he would block the sun and keep me cool."

"He all at once was gone. We don't know who he was. We don't know anything."

"We think it was a guardian angel there to protect me."

When Nick got to the local E.R., doctors still didn't know the severity of his wounds.

"We were able to get fluids going and we got O-negative blood from our lab and got that going."

X-ray and ultrasound images revealed the extent of the damage. Dr. Paul McQuillen and his team removed blood that was pooling around Nick's heart.

"We're a rural hospital. A small hospital. Sometimes we don't have platelets on hand."

And they never have plasma, a blood component essential for clotting.

"There was a sense of urgency as soon as you walked in."

Knowing they needed help, the hospital crew called Mayo One. One of the only helicopters in the U.S. equipped with life-saving plasma.

"Three units of plasma, three units of O-negative blood."

"The number one thing that allowed us to transport him back."

Back to Mayo Clinic where a trauma surgery team launched into action.

"When trauma patients are bleeding, getting them to stop bleeding is our goal."

Trauma surgeons Dr. Donald Jenkins, Dr. Scott Zietlow and colleagues are spearheading the effort to equip medical helicopters with plasma.

"If we could make a decision that a patient needed plasma, why would we wait 30 minutes for the helicopter to get here to administer it? We should be administering it as soon as possible."

There's no doubt the plasma helped keep Nick alive until surgery. But his injuries were very severe.

"Nick had lost more than 50-percent of the blood in his system. His likelihood of living through this was at best 50/50.

It was not easy to tell Kendra he might not last the night.

"Make it through the night? He might die?"

After days of not knowing, Nick made it.

"Ten days later it was a Sunday morning and I could tell in his eyes he was back."

"At the moment I guess it just to be with my wife Kendra."

As Nick looks back at this ordeal…

"My outlook on life has changed a little bit. The old saying, don't the sweat the small stuff, and its all small stuff, applies a lot more than it used to."

He realizes that if one link in the chain of events was broken; if Aaron hadn't found him, if the local doctors didn't act fast, if Mayo One wasn't equipped with plasma, if trauma surgeons were not ready, or if, perhaps, a guardian angel was not there watching over him, he would not be here. Alive and living with his wife on a farm that's been in his family for four generations.

"Just so many things fell into place. It couldn't have been a coincidence. It's by the grace of God that I'm here, I think, today."

For Mayo Clinic, I'm Vivien Williams.

Anchor tag:

This accident happened last August. By October he was able to get back in the field. Dr. Jenkins and his team are working to get more medical helicopters equipped with plasma, so more lives can be saved.

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