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30 years of tears, triumph for Massachusetts athletic trainer at Boston Marathon

Article reposted from The Enterprise
Author: Anna Burgess

 

After 30 years at the Boston Marathon, it’s impossible for Brockton trainer Jeri Connor to summarize the collapses, comebacks, breakdowns, and victories she has seen.

Connor, who was at the marathon finish line Monday morning waiting for the first wave of runners, said Patriot’s Day always stirs a lot of emotions.

Throughout the day, Connor finds the marathon inspiring, sad, interesting, and exhausting — but in a good way.

“It’s just a fun day,” she said. “The mood, the whole atmosphere is fun. There are so many positive things you see.”

Connor has been an athletic trainer at Brockton High School for more than 20 years, and has been volunteering for the marathon even longer.

She was at the finish line in 2011 when Geoffrey Mutai ran the fastest marathon ever, she was there in 2013 when the bombs went off, and she’ll be there next year, for the five-year anniversary.

On Monday morning, as the wheelchair participants zoomed across the finish line and the elite runners approached their halfway point, the temperature climbed into the 70s and the sun beat down.

Connor said she was most worried about treating heat exhaustion on a day like Monday.

“The finish line is pretty hot,” she said.

The worst conditions Connor has seen were about five years ago, when the temperature neared 90 degrees.

Connor’s status as a medical volunteer at the finish line is now coveted–there’s a long wait list.

Connor won’t be giving up her seniority for a long time, she said.

“I don’t plan on not doing it anytime soon.”

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Athletic Trainer Recounts Boston Marathon Bombing Experience

On April 15, 2013, aspiring athletic trainer Devin Wang helped save Jeff Bauman’s life after his lower legs were blown off by one of two bombs detonated near the Boston Marathon finish line.

The three years since have been healing for both of them.

Bauman learned to walk with prosthetics, wrote a book that is being made into a movie, married his girlfriend Erin Hurley and became a father.

Wang graduated from Boston University and continued to compete for the Haydenettes synchronized figure skating team, helping to win a world championships bronze medal earlier this month. She recently began working at a branch of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, the same institution where Bauman and many other bombing survivors were treated.

Yet they didn’t meet until last week, when they unexpectedly found themselves together at the finish line again.

“I think it had to happen that way,” an ebullient Wang said last week on the phone. “Right place, right time. Unscripted, not forced.”

To rewind: Associated Press photographer Charles Krupa’s picture of Wang pushing an ashen-faced Bauman in a wheelchair, accompanied by cowboy-hat wearing civilian Carlos Arredondo and EMT Paul Mitchell, remains perhaps the most enduring image of the heroism that emerged out of the chaos and horror.

Wang, then a 20-year-old BU student who was part of the volunteer medical team at the race, was traumatized both by the experience and the viral, global exposure of the picture itself. She retreated and kept her identity private until she was ready to tell her story several months later.

She has adjusted to her presence in the picture and her part in an event whose repercussions, like the photo itself, are lasting. But she didn’t feel compelled to seek out the man she last saw as he was loaded into an ambulance on Copley Square after a doctor screamed the obvious: “Double amputee!”

Wang has always believed she simply did her duty on race day when she pushed an empty wheelchair toward the blast zone. She has maintained throughout the years that she’s satisfied knowing that Bauman is well and going on with his life. She is self-effacing almost to a fault, and resisted the idea of a staged reunion.

Circumstances conspired to create a spontaneous one instead.

As she did in 2013, Wang was working in the “chutes” — the areas where runners funnel off to either side of Boylston Street after they finish, and where they sometimes stagger with dehydration or exhibit other symptoms that need medical attention.

She had met Arredondo briefly the year after the bombings, and he hailed her from afar on April 18 from the stands where he has become a fixture the past few years.

Wang thought about it and decided she wanted to shake Arredondo’s hand and speak to him. About six hours into the race, as the stream of runners began to dwindle, she gradually made her way toward the finish line, only to be stopped because she didn’t have the proper security credential.

Boston University head athletic trainer Larry Venis, who coordinates that contingent of the medical response team at the marathon, saw what was happening. He personally escorted her to Arredondo, who greeted Wang warmly, then gestured excitedly toward the middle of the course and told her Bauman was there because his wife was about to finish the marathon.

Wang turned around. A tall man in a Red Sox jersey — she would later learn he was Kevin Horst, Bauman’s former manager at Costco and now a close friend — wrapped her in a bear hug. Then she saw Bauman and Hurley a few feet away with their arms around each other.

The moment stunned Wang into temporary stillness. There was so much to take in. Bauman had been at the race three years ago to cheer Hurley on in a race that was cut short. He left Boylston Street with his life visibly draining away and his future a coin flip. Now he was standing before her, and Hurley had finished the race, and Wang was about to understand what completion felt like as well.

Arredondo called out to Bauman. In footage shot by WBZ-TV, Bauman glances at someone off-camera and then at a different spot, his eyebrows leaping with surprise. He does a double take and steps forward. Then Wang walks into the frame and into his arms.

They held each other and cried in the most public place imaginable, yet it was an intimate encounter. The cameras and commentators and spectators focused on Bauman and Hurley, symbols of perseverance: the man who awoke from surgery and helped identify a bombing suspect, the woman who stayed by his side. It was easy to miss the slight figure in a medical volunteer’s jacket with the brim of a ball cap shading half her face. Wang was anonymous again, in plain view.

“Jeff looked at me, and he goes, ‘Oh, my God, thank you so much, thank you, Devin,'” she recalled. When she let go of him to wipe away tears, her hands were still sheathed in purple Latex gloves — the athletic trainer’s garb she hadn’t had time to peel off.

“I barely saw him the first time I met him,” Wang said. “I picked him up on a wheelchair and just ran. So the only image of him I really remember is obviously that photo. I’ve seen pictures of him since the incident, but obviously to stand next to him, look him in the eyes, I don’t know, it’s different. It’s pretty remarkable. He’s come so far.”

Bauman and his wife invited her to their post-race dinner. She hesitated. She called her mother, wondering if she would be intruding. Her mother urged her to go, and Wang is very glad she did.

“I feel a little bit more at ease, I guess,” she said. “Having just met them and walked away from them, I think that would have been hard. Now I have a relationship with them.”

And then Wang said what she has probably known all along, what she has come to terms with and finally embraced:

“I mean, we are gonna be connected for the rest of our lives.”

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How the Boston Marathon bombing changed me

For five years, I’ve served on the medical team for the Boston Marathon. In 2013, I was assigned to the finish line area.

The day started for us at 7 a.m. with a standard medical meeting, even though the first runners wouldn’t be crossing the finish line for another several hours. In the meantime, we mostly enjoyed the fantastic weather perfect for marathon running.

Early afternoon approached, the start of our busiest time period as the “charity runners” who inevitably push themselves a little harder to finish the race begin pouring into the medical tent. Usually, we treat 1,500 to 2,000 runners per race.

After about an hour of our peak treatment time, I remember sitting there, finishing with a patient and saying, “This is really easy today.” Not long after, the first bomb went off.

Without knowing what it was, it didn’t seem like a big deal. Until the second explosion.

 

Twenty seconds later, people carried in a police officer on a stretcher. Then, all hell broke loose. Patients kept coming, and the athletic training tent quickly became a fully functional hospital, treating trauma victims of a terrorist attack instead of runners with strained muscles and blisters.

There are two things I’ll always remember from the day over everything else: The smell of gunpowder that clouded Boylston Street, and the frustration of the medical staff when the first fatal victim was brought in and they couldn’t save her.

 

 

My memory was that the treatment took hours, but the reality is that it only took half an hour to treat those who came to us. Sometimes, I’m still shocked when I think about how smoothly the process went in the midst of the utter chaos that none of us had experienced before. Soon, the FBI would kick everyone out in order to begin its investigation.

The magnitude of the event didn’t hit me until Wednesday, two days after the marathon, when I went back to work. I looked at my watch and realized I’d been staring blankly for nearly an hour, just reflecting on what had happened.

It may have taken a while to sink in, but three years later, the impact on my life is as stark now as it was then.

In American culture, sports are placed on a pedestal. Premier athletes are full-fledged celebrities. And many times, winning is seen as a cure-all.

It’s a mindset that even I subscribed to. As a young clinician, I approached athletic training when treating an athlete with the notion, “I’ve got to get you back in this game. You’ve got to play. That’s the most important thing.” It’s an easy trap to fall into, as parents, coaches and athletes themselves want to return to action as soon as possible.

The bombing has completely changed how I approach my patients.

Now, I don’t care what the scoreboard says. I don’t care what the coach says. Let’s look at things more holistically and ensure that athletes understand the ramifications of returning too quickly.

In the big picture, whether you return to the field, court, track or rink instantly is not that important. Continuing to be physically active in your sport and in life in general long-term is much more crucial. It’s something I recognize more fully now, and something the athletic training field overall understands better.

The same can be said of my personal life. Before the bombing, I worked a lot. Between providing medical coverage at sporting events and my ongoing research and publishing efforts, I was never home.

I realize now that I don’t have to cram the next 30 years of my professional life into the next five years of my career. I’ve adjusted my workdays to be home for the important things I really took for granted. Now, I pick my kids up from school most days and have family dinner every night.

It may sound utopian, but life-altering events are only such if you actually alter your life. And rather than changing out of fear, I’d rather change for the better.

The following year most of the staff returned, undeterred by the thought that we might be in danger. When we had the tent set up, I closed my eyes for a minute and the memories brought me back.

But there was never a moment where I didn’t plan to return. We’re simply back doing what we love to do.

Rather than altering my behavior on that single day of the year, I’ve chosen to change how I live the other 364 days.

Murphy is assistant professor and director of athletic training at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pa. He has served on the Boston Marathon medical team for the past five years and will be returning again Monday.

CLICK HERE FOR THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE