{"id":2201,"date":"2008-01-04T09:47:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-04T09:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2008\/01\/the-christmas-miracle-of-alcides-moreno.html"},"modified":"2008-01-04T09:47:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-04T09:47:00","slug":"the-christmas-miracle-of-alcides-moreno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/01\/the-christmas-miracle-of-alcides-moreno.html","title":{"rendered":"The Christmas miracle of Alcides Moreno"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a world hungry for hope, here is something to lift the heart<\/a>: the story of a New York City window washer who fell hundreds of feet from a skyscraper and, in what may be the very definition of “miracle”, survived: <\/p>\n

<\/a> Alcides Moreno plunged 47 stories that morning last month, clinging to his 3-foot-wide window washer\u2019s platform as it shot down the dark glass face of an Upper East Side apartment building. His brother Edgar, who had been working with him on the platform, was killed.<\/p>\n

Somehow, Alcides Moreno survived. <\/p>\n

He was given roughly 24 pints of blood and 19 pints of plasma and underwent an operation to open his abdomen in the emergency room because, his doctor said, they did not want to risk moving him to an operating room. As December went on, he endured nine orthopedic operations. <\/p>\n

Yet somehow, Alcides Moreno, the man who fell from the sky, survived.<\/p>\n

In his hospital room, amid all the machines that helped keep him alive, his wife, Rosario, lifted his hand again and again to stroke her face and her hair, hoping against hope that a simple tactile sensation would remind him, would help bring him back.<\/p>\n

Then on Christmas Day, Alcides Moreno reached out \u2014 and stroked the wrong face. <\/p>\n

\u201cApparently he tried to do it to one of the nurses,\u201d Rosario Moreno said on Thursday, describing how she chided him, gently, when she was told what had happened. \u201cI looked at him and said, \u2018You\u2019re not supposed to do that. I\u2019m your wife, you touch your wife.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For the first time since the accident on Dec. 7, he spoke.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe turned around and, in English, said, \u2018What did I do?\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cIt stunned me because I didn\u2019t know he could speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

Surrounded by doctors who had helped save her husband, Mrs. Moreno told her story at a press conference at which medical professionals with long years of experience in treating traumatic injuries used words like \u201cmiraculous\u201d and \u201cunprecedented\u201d to describe something that seems remarkable: a man who fell nearly 500 feet into a Manhattan alleyway is now talking and, with a little more luck, a few more operations and some rehabilitation therapy, may well walk again.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you are a believer in miracles, this would be one,\u201d said Dr. Philip S. Barie, the chief of the division of critical care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital\/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan, where Mr. Moreno, 37, is being treated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very pleased \u2014 dare I say astonished? \u2014 at the level of recovery that this patient has enjoyed so far,\u201d he added, \u201cand although there is more work to be done, we are very optimistic for his prospects for survival.\u201d<\/p>\n

Optimistic though they were, the doctors tempered their discussion of Mr. Moreno\u2019s prospects with some pragmatism. He will undergo surgery today to stabilize his spine. Sometime after that, he faces another orthopedic operation. Then there will be long months in rehabilitation. <\/p>\n

But they predicted that his recovery would be complete in about a year.<\/p>\n

Asked at the press conference whether Mr. Moreno would walk again, Dr. Barie said, \u201cWe believe so, yes.\u201d He noted that Mr. Moreno\u2019s pelvis had not been injured in the fall. Dr. Barie also said that all the injuries to Mr. Moreno\u2019s legs \u2014 some 10 fractures \u2014 had been \u201crepaired\u201d except one. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is not just survival, but functional survival,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Still, Dr. Barie suggested that Mr. Moreno had taken the team treating him into largely uncharted medical territory. Dr. Barie said Mr. Moreno\u2019s medical team had had no experience with someone who had fallen so far. He said that falls from even three stories can be fatal if the victim hits his or her head on landing. <\/p>\n

\u201cAbove 10 stories, most of the time we never see the patients because they usually go to the morgue,\u201d Dr. Barie said, though he added that the staff at New York-Presbyterian\/Weill Cornell had treated \u2014 and had written a medical journal article about \u2014 a patient who survived a 19-story fall, less than half the distance Mr. Moreno fell.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is right up there with those anecdotes of people falling out of airplanes and surviving, people whose parachutes don\u2019t open and somehow they manage to survive,\u201d Dr. Barie said in an interview after the press conference. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about tiny, tiny percentages, well under 1 percent, of people who fall that distance and survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Mr. Moreno, of Linden, N.J., confounded the odds from the beginning. He was sitting up when firefighters arrived at the building, the Solow Tower, at 265 East 66th Street. He was \u201con the borderline of consciousness\u201d when he was wheeled into the emergency room, Dr. Barie said, despite serious injuries to his brain, his spine, his chest and his abdomen, along with several fractured ribs, a broken right arm and two broken legs. <\/p>\n

Mrs. Moreno said her husband\u2019s determination had not vanished that day. \u201cIf anything, he keeps me going,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can read more at the New York Times link<\/a>. How is that for a Christmas miracle?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a world hungry for hope, here is something to lift the heart: the story of a New York City window washer who fell hundreds of feet from a skyscraper and, in what may be the very definition of “miracle”, survived: Alcides Moreno plunged 47 stories that morning last month, clinging to his 3-foot-wide window…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Christmas miracle of Alcides Moreno - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2008\/01\/the-christmas-miracle-of-alcides-moreno.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Christmas miracle of Alcides Moreno - 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