DUI crash victim meets with doctor who helped save her

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) -- The survivor of a 2007 car crash -- hit by a drunk driver -- reunited Tuesday with one of the trauma doctors who helped keep her alive. It's part of Rhode Island Hospital's celebration of its 150th anniversary -- and the good work done there.

"How you been?" emergency trauma surgeon Dr. Charles Adams said with a smile to Sylvia Bogusz. It's been years since they've seen each other, and six years since the then-17-year-old Sylvia was on his operating table.

Bogusz had been waiting on the side of the road in South Kingstown after her car got a flat tire. "I went outside of my car because I was taught that... and then a drunk driver hit me... I ended up waking up in the hospital," she recounted to a reporter.

Heidi Harrall was convicted of drunk driving back in 2008, and was sentenced to serve 7 years, nine months for the crime.

But Tuesday's reunion was about the good that came out of the incident, not the bad. Waking up from the coma is all Sylvia remembers, but Dr. Adams has much more to recall.

"She was really very close to death," he said; in fact, he told her parents he didn't think she was going to survive. It's one of the toughest things he's ever had to do, he said.

"The thing that made it particularly hard in this case was, Sylvia was a young girl. I have daughters. In some ways... [I was] trying to keep myself compartmentalized so that I could actually function as a physician," Dr. Adams recalled.

Getting back, giving back

Sylvia has lent her voice to local causes related to her incident. Last year, she spoke to students at Prout High School in South Kingstown about her experience, as part of a drill displaying what what kind of carnage and injury can occur in a DUI crash. She's also testified before the Rhode Island Senate on behalf of drunk driving legislation under consideration.

It took eight surgeries, nine months in the hospital, and countless sessions of physical therapy. Sylvia's regained so much of the life that was nearly taken from her. Her gratitude was evident.

But her former doctor said, she's the real hero.

"To finally see her get better and leave the hospital was really nothing short of a miracle," Dr. Adams said.

Sylvia, like many typical women in their early twenties, is set to graduate from graduate from college next year -- URI -- and is studying communications and Italian.