{"id":663,"date":"2020-09-02T03:28:42","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T03:28:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/?p=663"},"modified":"2020-09-02T03:28:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-02T03:28:42","slug":"lauren-survivor-survivor-lauren-manning-books-lauren-manning-burns-victim-pictures-laura-manning-greg-manning-greg-lauren-net-worth-martha-manning-laurens-9-11-elevator-lauren-on-survivor-u","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/lauren-survivor-survivor-lauren-manning-books-lauren-manning-burns-victim-pictures-laura-manning-greg-manning-greg-lauren-net-worth-martha-manning-laurens-9-11-elevator-lauren-on-survivor-u\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazing Things: Lauren Manning"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lauren Manning is used to making split-second decisions under pressure. A former Wall Street executive, an athlete, and the daughter of a Marine, she says, \u201cIn a crisis, no matter who you are, you can surrender or put on your game face.\u201d<\/p>\n

That attitude didn\u2019t desert her September 11, 2001, when she arrived at 1 World Trade Center and turned the corner into the lobby, toward the elevators, at 8:46 a.m.<\/p>\n

She barely paused when she heard an ear-splitting sound, chalking it up to construction. In reality, the piercing whistling was exploding jet fuel coming down the elevator from American Airlines Flight 11. The jet had crashed into floors 93\u201399 and cut off escape routes from the floors above, including 101\u2013105, where hundreds of Lauren\u2019s Cantor Fitzgerald colleagues were at their desks. For an instant, the tower trembled, then fire exploded from the elevators, engulfing Lauren and scores of others on the south and west sides of the lobby.<\/p>\n

As the flames enveloped her, igniting her back and arms, Lauren fled, making it across the six lanes of West Street traffic to a grass embankment, where she dropped and rolled with the aid of two good Samaritans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in complete and utter pain, I knew I needed a burn center, and some of the first words out of my mouth were, \u2018Get me to Weill Cornell, now!\u2019\u201d she recalls yelling.<\/p>\n

She wouldn\u2019t arrive at NewYork-Presbyterian\/Weill Cornell Medical Center until 10 hours later. She was first admitted to another hospital, one without specialized burn care. That night, Lauren was transferred through the locked-down city to the William Randolph Hearst Burn Center at NewYork-Presbyterian\/Weill Cornell.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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What It Takes to Heal Burns<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
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Seventeen other survivors were in the intensive care unit that night. Many wouldn\u2019t make it. Lauren\u2019s burns were catastrophic and covered 82.5 percent of her body.<\/p>\n

In the weeks after, she faced severe infection and an onslaught of surgeries, including grafts, partial finger amputations and joint fusions.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe also had serious injuries to her lungs, and we needed to put her on a ventilator,\u201d says\u00a0Dr. Palmer Bessey, associate director of the Hearst Burn Center and the Aronson Family Foundation Professor of Burn Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine. Her chance of dying was estimated at 90\u201395 percent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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\u201cHer accomplishments every day, from the moment she opened her eyes, made grown people weep, and it kept happening again and again.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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The medical team, led by Dr. Roger Yurt, retired chief of burns, critical care, and trauma at the Hearst Burn Center and Professor Emeritus of Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, then the director at the burn center, would perform 11 surgeries. Each had multiple procedures, including using cadaver skin and skin grafts as Lauren lay in an induced coma for almost two months.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe body eventually rejects the cadaver skin, so you have to keep shaving off what healthy skin she has left, expand and stretch it to cover a part of the burned area, then wait for the healthy areas to heal, and then take more skin to cover another small part of the burn,\u201d says Dr. Bessey.<\/p>\n

Surgery was only the first step.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they brought me out of the coma, it was already late October,\u201d Lauren recalls. \u201cI knew I\u2019d been injured, but I still somehow believed that I\u2019d be going home at the end of the week. I guess I had a positive attitude from the outset,\u201d she said with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Lauren would learn how seriously she\u2019d been wounded when Dr. Yurt explained the extreme nature of her injury and that there was no certain release date.<\/p>\n

Lauren during her recovery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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Occupational and physical therapists continued to work on her limbs, as they\u2019d begun doing weeks before she was brought out of the coma. On November 12, Lauren\u2019s physical therapists announced that her goal that day was to walk to a chair in the corner of her room, about 4 feet from her bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018These people think that\u2019s all I can do? That\u2019s easy \u2014 I\u2019ve got this,\u2019\u201d Lauren recalls. Within minutes, she discovered she didn\u2019t have the strength to sit up on her own. Putting weight on her feet and her grafted legs for the first time in two months was excruciating.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt as if my body was pulling apart. I almost passed out from the pain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet with help, she dragged her legs and made it to that chair, tears streaming down her face.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was elated,\u201d she says. \u201cI called it the day of the walking mummy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three days later, determined and flanked by PTs once again, she walked 30 feet to the ICU nurses\u2019 station. Nurses, doctors, and therapists crowded around. One of the occupational therapists ran out to the corridor, its walls covered with cards from well-wishers around the world, to get Lauren\u2019s parents, exclaiming, \u201cLauren is walking!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt an incredible surge of freedom,\u201d Lauren says. \u201cEveryone was clapping and crying, and I realized that my fight was their fight and that we were a team. My triumphs were ours together and that this was our victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of Lauren\u2019s motivation was her son, Tyler, 10 months old the day of the attacks, who was not allowed to see her until 67 days afterward, when the risk of infection was less severe. In the time they\u2019d been apart, he had his first birthday and learned to walk. The day of the visit he toddled past, not recognizing her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could see he was afraid and uncertain, so I sang as best I could, having just had the tracheal tube removed, a little lullaby that used to soothe him,\u201d she says. At last he turned toward Lauren. \u201cHe smiled at me. Everything I had fought and hoped for was embodied in that moment of recognition. That visit, and the ones that came after, fueled me forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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\u201cHer accomplishments every day, from the moment she opened her eyes, made grown people weep, and it kept happening again and again,\u201d says her husband, Greg, whose best-selling book,\u00a0Love, Greg & Lauren<\/em>, recounts the first six months of Lauren\u2019s recovery. \u201cShe\u2019s the strongest person I know. She said she wanted to make the injured woman disappear, and like every other impossible goal she set, she achieved it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lauren credits her equally determined medical team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the power and hope in everyone\u2019s heart on a day-to-day basis, caregivers\u2019 footsteps outside my door in the quietest hours of the night, checking on me,\u201d Lauren says. \u201cEvery single person there had the same goal: to win. We met every setback with the desire to conquer the next. I existed outside the bell curve of survival odds, but together we accomplished things that no one believed I could.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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A Delicate Balance<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n
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Helping burn survivors requires being \u201ctough but supportive,\u201d says Dr. Bessey.<\/p>\n

Lauren agrees. \u201cIt\u2019s sometimes not clear to clinicians to know how far to push someone \u2014 to know when the patient has reached their breaking point,\u201d she says. Yet despite that push-pull, \u201cI remained relentless, and amidst all the pain we also managed to laugh through the tears.\u201d<\/p>\n

After 91 days, Lauren was discharged to a rehabilitation hospital for three months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d been asking about leaving for so long, but as the day approached, although I was initially ecstatic, I was also afraid,\u201d she admits. \u201cI knew the people in the hospital, the routine \u2014 it had become my home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lauren went home in March 2002. She was beginning the next phase of a decade-long recovery. She traveled to NewYork-Presbyterian\/Weill Cornell five days a week for hours of grueling occupational and physical therapy. On Sundays, an occupational therapist she befriended at the hospital came to her home for another session.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy relationship with the hospital and my caregivers lasted for years. I had frequent operations, on average every nine weeks during the first few years, to help release scar tissue on my hands, my arms, my shoulders, and back. I was there all the time. NewYork-Presbyterian\/Weill Cornell became my workplace, my recovery, my full-time job.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the 10-year anniversary of the terror attacks, Lauren\u2019s best-selling memoir,\u00a0Unmeasured Strength: A Story of Survival and Transformation<\/em>, published. Since then, Lauren has shared her story of inspiration and courage as a speaker to audiences throughout the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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\u201cI felt an incredible surge of freedom. Everyone was clapping and crying, and I realized that my fight was their fight and that we were a team. My triumphs were ours together and that this was our victory.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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\u201cShe is the reason for her success,\u201d says Dr. Bessey. \u201cWe were able to keep her body alive, but she was the one to get her life back.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Lauren\u2019s prime motivations is mothering her two sons, Tyler, now 16, and Jagger, 7, born in 2009 with the help of a gestational carrier. \u201cI fought so hard to get back to being a mom,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen I look into my sons\u2019 eyes, it\u2019s all there \u2014 everything I fought for, the grace I feel for just being alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, Lauren is making the most of that, as co-founder of a consumer privacy startup, YouBoard Inc., and she is working on a master\u2019s degree in narrative medicine\/bioethics at Columbia University.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore the attacks, I used to breeze right by the little things, all those expected or mundane activities that you don\u2019t pay attention to, like seeing a friend for lunch or bringing your son to school. I treasure each of these simple and joyful moments now,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The 658 of her colleagues who were killed on 9\/11 are never far from her thoughts, particularly every September 11, when she gathers with her Cantor Fitzgerald family for their annual memorial.<\/p>\n

\u201cI worked alongside those people for years. So many were good friends,\u201d she says. \u201cI was half a step removed from the ones who died. But they didn\u2019t have the chance I had to fight. I have never failed to appreciate that gift.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also makes time to see her former medical team. \u201cIt\u2019s like returning for a school reunion \u2014 we recount the old stories,\u201d she says. Of course, it\u2019s much more than that. \u201cI should be dead, but I\u2019m not, and that\u2019s not because of luck, but because of the fortitude, talent, and commitment we had as a team. We were in it together, and not one of us wanted to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Lauren says, \u201cEvery day you have a choice. We chose to make it count.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: healthmatters.nyp.org<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauren Manning is used to making split-second decisions under pressure. A former Wall Street executive, an athlete, and the daughter of a Marine, she says, \u201cIn a crisis, no matter who you are, you can surrender or put on your game face.\u201d That attitude didn\u2019t desert her September 11, 2001, when she arrived at 1 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":664,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2307],"tags":[2426,2416,2434,2424,2420,2411,2440,2436,2453,2454,2445,2437,2450,2419,2414,2447,2413,2432,2425,2452,2439,2431,2412,2449,2410,2430,2448,2451,2417,2407,2433,2442,2409,2423,2415,2422,2428,2408,2435,2441,2421,2427,2438,2418,2443,2444,2446,2429],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":665,"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663\/revisions\/665"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.talksomuch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}