Emily Bailey's Accident 1 (long)
Karen and Ken
Saturday, July 12, 1997
RIVIERA TRIP TAKES
NOT-SO-NICE TURN
By Victor Volland
And Mei-Ling Hopgoo
Of The Post-Dispatch Staff
Emily Bailey figures she's had a bummer of a summer.
The former Flora, Ill., resident broke her back in three places in an
automobile accident while vacationing on the French Riviera. Then she
and her family had to spend almost $16,000 for air fare to get her
back to St. Louis for quick surgery.
Bailey, 20, arrived Friday afternoon at Lambert Field
on a Trans World Airlines flight from Paris. With her were her mother,
Shirley Bailey, who is a registered nurse, and her sister, Danielle
Birch, 22, who flew to Paris to bring her home.
An Abbott ambulance was waiting on the tarmac to rush her to
Barnes-Jewish Hospital. There, a trauma surgeon, Dr. Perren Cobb, was
waiting to assess her condition and decide whether to operate to
repair her spinal fractures and several facial fractures.
Donald Bailey, who farms in Flora, was relieved to see his daughter
able to walk down the gangplank with a back brace. He ran over to hug
her lightly before she let herself down on the ambulance stretcher.
"I'm fine now, Daddy," she told him.
The $12,000 TWA air fare was the cost of the nine-seat space the
Bailey party required on the fully loaded, 190-passenger Boeing 767.
Emily Bailey could not sit up and was required to lie supine on the
stretcher during the flight. The family also had to pay nearly $4,000
more for a similar arrangement on a French plane to Paris from Nice.
Donald Bailey borrowed the money from family members to bring his
daughter home. He said TWA was the only airline that would talk with
him about getting his daughter flown back. He said another U.S.
airline referred him to its ambulance air service, which would have
cost five times more.
Donn Walker, a TWA spokesman, said Bailey was flying at the peak of
the summer tourist season, and that her direct flight to St. Louis
from Paris was fully booked. He said TWA had to bump nine passengers
to accommodate the three women and the stretcher. The airline sold the
tickets at the fairmarket price of $1,337 apiece, or a total of
$12,033.
"We bent over backward to help them. But when we have a full flight,
we don't and can't afford to give away tickets free . . . . I do
sympathize with the family."
The logistics in getting Emily Bailey home began inauspiciously with a
call to the Baileys' family doctor in Flora, Bradley Reynolds. Shirley
Bailey called from the trauma hospital in Nice, after she ran into a
language barrier with French doctors and what she described as their
zero-bedside manner and less-than-sterile hospital conditions.
Reynolds knew Emily Bailey would need specialized, extensive surgery,
preferably in an American hospital. He advised Shirley Bailey to bring
her daughter home as soon as possible.
Reynolds took advantage of Barnes-Jewish Hospital's year-old Doctors
Access, a 24-hour physician-to-physician consulting hot line, and
talked with Dr.Tim Buchman, head of the trauma service. After talking
with the French doctors through an AT&T interpreter, Buchman seconded
Reynolds'suggestion.
Emily Bailey, who had lived the past year in Los Angeles, was touring
Europe on a three-month youth Eurailpass. The accident occurred when
she and three Norwegian friends were returning to Nice from the
Italian Riviera. Their Volkswagen convertible collided with a
tractor-trailer on a rain-slick coastal road. All four were
hospitalized.
Late Friday, after initial screening by Dr. Cobb and other trauma
specialists, Emily Bailey was chipper and resting comfortably at
Barnes-Jewish, clutching a stuffed animal she had brought earlier for
her sister, Elizabeth, 9.
"I want to get well and travel again. My goal now is Norway in
September," she said with a smile. She said the "Magnificent Four"
survivors planned a reunion there then.
The driver of the car, Christian Brevik, had worked with her at a film
production company in Los Angeles that packaged an MTV cable travel
show called "Road Rules." On the program, the two were among five
20-somethings who tooled around the U.S. in a Winnebago seeking out
unbeaten paths.
Cobb said his patient might make her September deadline. "We're not
sure yet whether we'll have to operate on the spinal fractures, but
they appear not to be too serious," he said. Plastic surgery is
scheduled for Wednesday to repair facial fractures in the right cheek
and forehead and a possible broken jaw.
"She's young and should heal quickly. I expect a full recovery," the
doctor added.
Donald Bailey said he had no regrets about spending the $16,000 to
bring his daughter home. "It was a bargain. . . . To see her walk down
off that plane today was worth the week and a half of turmoil dealing
with this nightmare."
KathStal
><<The driver of the car, Christian Brevik, had worked with her at a film
>production company in Los Angeles that packaged an MTV cable travel
>show called "Road Rules." On the program, the two were among five
>20-somethings who tooled around the U.S. in a Winnebago seeking out
>unbeaten paths.>>
>
>geared towards the really old, and out of touch?
>
>George
No, it's just good journalism. A good reporter NEVER assumes his or her
readers know the background of a story.