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School shooting survivor turns tragedy into advocacy · 20-Minute Health Talk

0:00
Me and my friends would kind of, like,
0:02
gather in this one part of the
0:04
hallway before our
0:05
fifth hour class,
0:06
and it was just so
0:08
out of nowhere,
0:09
I just fell to the ground.
0:13
Our principal came on like,
0:15
the PAand was like,
0:16
"We're in a lockdown. This is not a drill." And I was like, oh,
0:20
my gosh
0:21
that's what's happening. Like,
0:23
I was just shot?
0:29
Hello,
0:30
and welcome to 20 Minutes Health Talk
0:32
I'm Sandra Lindsay.
0:36
Two years ago, a horrific shooting at Oxford
0:40
High School in Michigan claimed
0:43
the lives of four students.
0:46
Today, one of the survivors,
0:49
Kylie Ossege,
0:50
is still recovering from the
0:52
physical and emotional trauma
0:55
left by the bullet that
0:57
shattered her clavicle and
0:59
nearly left her paralyzed.
1:02
I still don't have 100% feeling
1:04
in my legs. They're still, like,
1:06
pretty numb,
1:07
but I can walk now and stuff.
1:09
But it took a long time,
1:11
and it's still healing
1:12
to this day.
1:14
On today's episode,
1:16
you'll hear from Kylie, now 19,
1:20
and her mother, Marita,
1:23
as well as the surgeon who
1:24
recently performed an operation
1:27
at Lenox Hill Hospital to
1:30
stabilize her spine and give her
1:33
a better chance at recovery.
1:35
But her journey to this point
1:37
has been a long, winding road,
1:40
and it started on November 30, 2021.
1:45
I believe it was a Tuesday and
1:48
just carried on my day normally,
1:50
and ate lunch with my friends,
1:52
as I did every day.
1:53
And it was just so normal.
1:55
And then I remember hearing,
1:57
like, a balloon popping,
1:58
or so I thought it was at the time.
2:01
It was during passing time.
2:02
So there was a lot of kids in
2:03
the hallway, and then in, like,
2:05
a matter of seconds, it was, like, empty.
2:07
And then three people stayed
2:09
in the hallway.
2:10
Before she knew what was
2:12
happening around her,
2:13
the force of the bullet caused
2:15
Kylie to fall to the ground.
2:18
A fellow student had opened fire
2:22
in the school hallway.
2:24
That became more clear when she
2:27
saw two classmates also
2:29
on the floor,
2:30
severely injured and bleeding.
2:33
Kylie tried her best to help
2:35
despite still being in danger herself
2:38
So Hannah was, like,
2:40
right next to me,
2:41
and I kept reaching over,
2:43
and I was in a, like, almost,
2:45
like,
2:45
petting her head and just kind
2:46
of, like, trying to comfort her.
2:49
And I kept telling her,
2:50
I'm like, just keep breathing.
2:52
Help is going to come.
2:53
Don't worry. Just stay here.
2:56
Keep breathing. And it's like,
2:59
I wonder every day if
3:01
Hannah knows that I said those
3:03
things to her. And it's like,
3:05
I wonder if she did
3:07
hear those things,
3:08
if it comforted her in any way.
3:09
And I really hope it did,
3:12
just because it's like I was the
3:15
last person to be there with
3:16
her. Before she passed away.
3:18
And
3:20
it's obviously sad to me that I
3:23
couldn't do anything to help her
3:24
more, and I wish I could.
3:27
While she was able to think
3:29
clearly and reach out with her
3:31
arms, just moments earlier,
3:34
she realized she couldn't
3:36
feel or move her legs.
3:39
I remember I was, like,
3:40
hitting my legs a lot with my
3:41
hands because I couldn't
3:42
feel my legs.
3:44
And I kind of almost
3:45
tried to do, like,
3:45
a push up in a way with my arms
3:48
to almost drag my body
3:50
to a safe place.
3:51
But I was just in so much pain
3:53
because I didn't know
3:55
at the time,
3:56
but my clavicle was shattered,
3:58
my spine was messed up,
4:00
so I was kind of just forced to
4:02
lay there until help
4:03
came to get me.
4:05
And it felt like the longest
4:06
15 minutes of my life.
4:14
Kylie was initially paralyzed
4:16
by the bullet,
4:17
which entered through her
4:18
collarbone and went
4:20
out her back.
4:21
She underwent emergency surgery
4:23
at a local hospital that same day
4:27
Entering the hospital,
4:28
all I'm seeing from my vision is, like,
4:31
the ceiling with the bright
4:32
lights and a ton of just random
4:35
people in blue scrubs and
4:36
white coats, just, like, on the sides of me,
4:38
and they're saying my vitals.
4:40
And even though that could
4:42
be scary to some people,
4:43
I think it was a huge relief to me,
4:45
just knowing that people
4:47
were there to help me.
4:49
That was the first moment I kind
4:51
of got to relax was when
4:53
I got to the hospital,
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just because I knew I was safe.
4:55
Kylie's mother, Marita,
4:57
found out about the shooting
4:58
from a coworker and immediately
5:01
rushed to the hospital.
5:03
And the ER doctor came and said
5:06
that Kylie had been
5:08
shot in the chest,
5:10
and they were just working
5:13
to get her stable.
5:14
They had to put a chest tube in
5:16
her because they were worried
5:16
about her lungs collapsing.
5:21
And he started crying,
5:23
and he held my hand,
5:25
and he said, I have children, too.
5:28
And so
5:30
tragic, tragic time for me to walk
5:33
in and to see her,
5:35
but at the same time,
5:36
a relief because she was there.
5:38
She knew me.
5:39
She was telling me things that
5:41
had happened. So in my mind,
5:44
I'm thinking,
5:45
I think she's going to be okay.
5:47
I was hoping that she can be okay
5:49
okay. At the hospital,
5:50
the full extent of the
5:52
damage was realized.
5:54
The bullet not only shattered her clavicle,
5:57
but also damaged portions of her
5:59
spine and some of the joints
6:01
between the cervical and the
6:03
thoracic spine as it exited through her back.
6:07
When it did that, it destabilized,
6:10
basically her neck.
6:12
That's Dr. John Carridi,
6:14
a spine surgeon at Lenox Hill
6:17
Hospital who would eventually
6:19
treat Kylie in 2023,
6:22
Showing us scans of Kylie's spine,
6:24
taken right after the injury.
6:27
He said the November 2021
6:29
surgery saved her life.
6:32
The bullet fractured her
6:34
clavicle here and then went
6:36
through the facet joints and
6:39
destroyed some of the lamina.
6:41
The lamina is a protective piece
6:44
of bone in the back part of the spine,
6:47
where many muscles responsible
6:49
for posture connect to the
6:51
spine. Without the lamina,
6:54
they have nowhere to connect,
6:56
leading to stability issues.
6:58
And then she had a blood clot.
7:00
Because the bullet caused
7:02
a lot of bleeding,
7:03
they removed the bone back here
7:06
and evacuated the blood clot.
7:08
That's why she was able to
7:10
regain her function walking.
7:14
Her recovery has been absolutely remarkable.
7:17
Removing the clot eased the
7:19
pressure on the spine.
7:21
Kylie spent the next two months
7:23
at that hospital,
7:25
longer than anyone injured
7:27
in the shooting.
7:28
An intense course of physical
7:30
and occupational therapy helped
7:33
her to walk again,
7:34
but she was left with chronic,
7:37
sometimes debilitating
7:38
back pain. That, Dr.
7:40
Caridi told us is because her
7:43
spine was still unstable.
7:45
There's a lot of things that go
7:46
into creating stability in our spine.
7:50
It's the interaction of the muscles, the joints,
7:54
the ligaments, tendons,
7:55
and all of these other things.
7:58
So if you have some kind of disruption,
8:01
you lose the ability of your
8:04
spine to keep you in
8:07
a normal posture.
8:08
So your spine then becomes
8:10
subject to gravity,
8:12
pulling you down. So over time,
8:15
gravity just pulled the weight
8:16
of her head down.
8:17
And as it pulled her head down,
8:21
her spine developed what we call kyphosis.
8:24
Kyphosis is an abnormal rounding
8:26
of the upper back. For Kylie,
8:29
the bullet's impact,
8:31
and to a lesser extent,
8:32
the surgery to remove her lamina
8:35
weakened her spine.
8:37
Her kyphosis was so severe that
8:40
she had trouble keeping
8:41
her head upright.
8:43
Her muscles basically were
8:44
working overtime to keep her
8:46
head up and keep her gaze forward,
8:49
Sometimes referred to as swan neck due to the exaggerated
8:54
forward curve, Dr. Caridi said Kylie's condition
8:58
would have progressed into what
9:00
he called a "chin on chest" deformity,
9:04
Which is exactly what.
9:05
It sounds like, literally.
9:06
Her chin would have been
9:07
resting on her chest,
9:08
and she wouldn't be able
9:09
to pick her head up.
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What that does is it also puts a
9:12
lot of pressure on the spinal
9:13
cord because it's essentially
9:14
draping across the vertebrae.
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And so she could have developed
9:19
worsening weakness in her legs
9:21
and trouble walking again
9:23
and things like that.
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So she would have had not only
9:26
this postural problem,
9:27
but also neurologic issues as well.
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Having worked so hard and so
9:33
long to regain the function she had,
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Kylie could only push forward.
9:38
So when our surgeons in Michigan
9:41
told her she would need another
9:43
surgery to stabilize her spine.
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She agreed.
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I knew for this surgery that I
9:48
wanted to go to the best of the best,
9:51
just to make sure the surgery
9:54
was done correctly and that
9:56
it would be, hopefully,
9:57
the last surgery I needed
9:58
for this problem.
10:00
A family friend connected Kylie
10:03
with the team at Lenox Hill Hospital,
10:05
a premier destination for
10:07
neurological and spinal care.
10:10
After reviewing Kylie's case,
10:12
the chair of the department, Dr. David Langer,
10:16
referred her to Dr. Caridi,
10:18
who specializes in spine surgery, spinal tumors,
10:22
and spinal deformities.
10:24
From there,
10:25
we kind of just scheduled a
10:26
surgery and just kind of like,
10:30
took off from there.
10:30
I think they, Dr. Langer and
10:33
Dr. Caridi really understood the
10:35
importance of the surgery
10:36
to me and my family.
10:37
So I think they really helped to
10:41
make us a priority in a sense,
10:44
and to make sure that we
10:46
got this done when we wanted to,
10:49
the way we wanted to.
10:51
Before pursuing the second surgery,
10:54
Kylie wanted to focus on college
10:56
friends and attempt to get back
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to a semblance of normal life.
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In 2022,
11:02
she entered her freshman year at
11:05
Michigan State University,
11:07
where she's studying kinesiology,
11:10
taking inspiration from her
11:13
countless caretakers throughout
11:15
this journey.
11:20
Sadly,
11:21
just one semester into her
11:23
college experience,
11:24
tragedy struck again with
11:28
another school shooting,
11:29
this time at Michigan State.
11:32
She was not injured in the deadly attack.
11:36
Since,
11:37
she has become active using her
11:40
voice and sharing her story in
11:42
hopes of affecting change.
11:44
I joined a club,
11:46
which is a chapter of March for our lives,
11:49
which is a gun violence prevention organization.
11:51
So we've been doing a lot of
11:53
work there. So it's educational,
11:56
and it's also, in a way,
11:58
it's like a therapy for
12:01
a lot of people,
12:02
just because since Michigan State had a shooting this year,
12:07
technically, but last semester,
12:09
I think it's a good place for
12:12
people to come together and kind
12:13
of grieve together in a way.
12:15
And it's a good place for people
12:17
to support one another.
12:18
But obviously,
12:20
our main goal is just to make
12:21
change and make the world a
12:24
safer place for a lot of people.
12:26
In addition to educating people
12:28
about gun violence and firearm
12:31
safety, she shares her story.
12:34
For those who are no longer here
12:36
and whose voices cannot be heard.
12:40
Internally, I have to do something because
12:43
they can't do anything.
12:44
So
12:45
I need to do something for them.
12:48
It's definitely something that I
12:50
struggle with a little bit every day,
12:52
just knowing that little
12:53
bit of survivor's guilt,
12:55
because it's like,
12:57
why was it them and not know?
12:59
That's a big question.
13:00
I have a lot.
13:07
After finishing her
13:08
second semester,
13:10
Kylie and her family traveled to
13:12
New York City for her second
13:14
surgery, this time with Dr. Caridi Caridi
13:17
How's it going?
13:18
Good., How are you? Not too bad.
13:19
How are you feeling?
13:20
I'm feeling pretty good.
13:21
Neck feels okay?
13:23
Yeah, neck feels good.
13:24
The act of correcting that
13:26
kyphosis is risky to the spinal cord.
13:30
If you stretch the spinal cord,
13:32
you could potentially damage
13:33
it because it's a redo.
13:37
She'd had surgery in the past
13:39
that makes it a little
13:39
bit more challenging.
13:41
In a five hour operation on July 17,
13:45
a team of surgeons led by Dr.
13:47
Caridi fused Kylie's spine from
13:50
her C-7 vertebrae found at
13:53
the base of the neck to her
13:55
T-6 vertebrae in the upper back.
13:58
We have seven independently
14:00
moving bones in our neck,
14:01
twelve in our thoracic spine,
14:03
and then five in the
14:04
lumbar spine.
14:05
So the idea of a spinal fusion
14:07
is to turn two or more of those
14:10
bones into one solid piece of bone.
14:13
He explained that they cut away
14:15
sections of the bone,
14:17
which become stiff when in the
14:19
deformed posture Kylie's spine
14:22
had taken on. That, he said,
14:24
loosens them up again.
14:26
We put the screws in,
14:27
and then those screws are fixed
14:29
with rods so that they
14:31
can't move anymore.
14:32
And then what we do is we use
14:35
bone graft materials.
14:37
What that does is that actually
14:38
forms the bone that
14:40
heals together,
14:42
so it ends up being a solid
14:44
piece instead of these
14:45
independently moving pieces.
14:47
The result for Kylie, Dr. Caridi said,
14:50
is a much straighter spine,
14:53
which he expects will continue
14:55
to improve.
14:56
The portions of her spine up above this will
14:59
gradually return to their normal
15:02
spot. The other thing is,
15:04
now the muscles have something to attach to
15:09
You know, before there was no bone back here.
15:11
Now they can attach to the rods.
15:14
to hold her head up even better.
15:17
Over time, he added, this will also ease Kylie's chronic pain.
15:22
Yeah, I feel good, though. Yeah.
15:24
You're still doing pt? Yep.
15:26
And then you feel like you're
15:27
getting your range of motion
15:29
in your neck?
15:30
Yeah for the most part.
15:31
This isn't bad.
15:32
This isn't bad.
15:34
How about right and left?
15:35
This is good.
15:36
I can do that one easily.
15:37
All right, cool.
15:38
And your legs are still working
15:40
fine? Yeah, still working good.
15:42
I walked here in heels,
15:43
if that makes it better.
15:44
Wow. Impressive.
15:46
Now that I'm stable,
15:48
they have a lot of
15:49
hope like I do.
15:50
They hope that my pain will
15:52
start to diminish soon.
15:53
They hope that I can get
15:54
back to those things.
15:55
But it's like I have
15:58
all these hopes,
15:58
but I have to remember that I'm
16:00
still healing, in a sense.
16:01
Four months after her successful
16:04
surgery and nearly two full
16:06
years after the Oxford
16:08
high school shooting,
16:09
Kylie returned to Lenox Hill
16:11
Hospital with her family to once
16:14
again share her story in the
16:17
hopes that it can help others.
16:20
This part of Kylie's story, her mother said,
16:24
feels a little closer to complete.
16:26
We've always had this, like,
16:28
weight on our shoulders because
16:29
we knew the surgery was coming
16:31
and we really didn't know what
16:32
to expect from the surgery.
16:34
But after July 17, it's like a fresh start
16:42
and she's much better
16:44
than we had thought.
16:47
But just getting her back to her
16:48
life, little improvements, her interests,
16:51
things that she says that she
16:53
wants to do, it's uplifting.
16:55
So we're happy.
16:57
Looking ahead, Kylie hopes to get back to
17:00
her favorite pastimes,
17:02
which include tennis,
17:04
basketball and most of all,
17:06
horseback riding.
17:08
It's just a huge part of my
17:09
life, whether I'm riding or not,
17:12
it's therapy.
17:13
Kylie picked up on her mother's
17:15
love for horses and equestrian
17:18
life at a very young age.
17:20
So I currently own a quarter
17:24
horse gelding named Blaze,
17:26
who's, I think he's what,
17:28
13 years old now?
17:30
Even though I can't ride him,
17:31
it's still fun to go hang
17:33
out with him and stuff.
17:34
Asked if she thinks that she'll
17:36
be able to ride again,
17:38
Kylie didn't hesitate.
17:40
Oh yeah. it's not even a question.
17:41
I'm going to make it happen
17:43
no matter what.
17:45
That's the magical thing
17:47
about horses.
17:49
He provides hope. We have hope.
17:51
So she has hope. She has.
17:54
And that's what they say.
17:56
Heaven on earth.
17:58
Horses are heaven on earth.
17:59
So that's her hope.
18:01
Dr. Caridi says Kylie is doing great
18:04
after surgery and expects her
18:06
quality of life to continue
18:08
to improve from here.
18:09
On a personal note, he said,
18:12
it's gratifying to be able to
18:14
help someone impacted
18:16
by gun violence.
18:17
I trained at the University
18:18
of Maryland.
18:19
We saw a lot of patients
18:20
with gunshot wounds.
18:22
It's heart wrenching to see like
18:23
a young person whose
18:24
life has ended or. Ruined completely
18:27
Too often, he recalled, there was little they could do to help.
18:32
To be able to help her and see.
18:36
She's such a motivational person.
18:39
She's achieved so much already,
18:41
and she's only 19 years old.
18:43
The fact that she's an advocate
18:44
and she's so eloquent and kind
18:47
of a role model for everybody,
18:49
it means a lot to be able to
18:52
help her get to where she's
18:54
going and at least try and get
18:57
some semblance of normalcy.
19:07
I want to thank Kylie and her mother, Marita,
19:10
for sharing their story with us.
19:13
I couldn't agree more. With what Dr. Caridi said.
19:16
Kylie is an inspiration and
19:19
shows such courage and poise in
19:22
the face of this tragic event,
19:24
which nearly took her life.
19:27
We at Northwell Health support
19:29
Kylie not only from a medical perspective,
19:33
but in her quest to create
19:34
change and raise public
19:36
awareness around gun violence
19:39
prevention and safety.
19:41
I was glad to see that when
19:43
Kylie returned to Lenox Hill
19:45
Hospital to mark two years since
19:47
the Oxford High School shooting
19:50
that she was joined by the
19:51
director of Northwell's Center for Gun Violence Prevention
19:57
Dr. Chethan Sathya.
19:59
As he said that day,
20:01
Kylie's story and the shootings
20:03
at both Oxford High School and
20:06
Michigan State highlight
20:08
a tragic trend.
20:09
Guns are now the number one
20:12
killer of children in America.
20:14
He added that we need to
20:16
recognize the long lasting
20:18
effects gun violence has on its
20:21
victims, their families,
20:23
community and society as a whole
20:26
to better implement change.
20:29
To learn more about Northwell's efforts as well as
20:34
March for lives, the Gun Violence Prevention
20:37
organization Kylie is a part of
20:40
follow the links in the show notes
20:48
that does it for this episode. Until next time,
20:55
stay safe and be well.