An all-access journey with veteran NBL QB Alex Smith who suffered a severe leg break during the 2018 NFL season. | dG1fRlB0aGNSWWsySW8
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00:00 The following segment contains graphic images. Viewer discretion is advised.
00:07 Game day in the NFL is a special thing. To feel like the full range of emotions,
00:19 to put ourselves out there, to be vulnerable. I mean it's living, right? I
00:23 mean that's like fully alive. Alex Smith, 14-year veteran, has this team in first
00:29 place in their division. Yeah Redskins back in business down by 10 here. First
00:35 possession in the second half. Third down and nine of the Houston 24, Smith in the
00:38 gun. Here comes the blitz, McCullough McLean, Alex Smith under heat, he's steamrolled at
00:45 the 40-yard line. And Alex Smith is hurt. He's hurt bad, man. Look at him. He's in a
00:51 lot of pain.
00:56 As I go down, I didn't hear anything. It went fuzzy. I think I remember saying,
01:04 "You're right, you know, big fella." Just the look on his face was, he knew it was
01:10 something serious. I asked the coach next to me what happened. I thought it was a
01:16 concussion or something, I didn't know. Somebody else next to him said, "I saw his
01:21 legs in two different places." To know immediately your legs broken, bending
01:29 where it shouldn't bend, certainly is a unusual sight.
01:36 We all stand because we realize it's Alex's player down. And I look down at my
01:43 eight-year-old and he is like welling up with tears and he says, "Mom, the carts
01:48 coming."
02:01 And the Redskins bench and Texans bench emptied to go pay tribute to Alex Smith
02:08 who will get the standing ovation as he is driven out of this stadium. What a
02:13 moment. Immediately I remember thinking that like, "Oh, the season's over."
02:20 I mean, he'd get carted off. That's kind of when the shock wore off and it got
02:33 pretty painful at that point.
02:37 We went right into x-ray. So we saw a tibia fracture that extended from his
02:43 ankle all the way up to his knee. Very complex fracture. There was bones
02:50 sticking out of it. Now that it's open, he's going straight to the operating
02:53 room. There's no waiting around.
02:56 Alex was rushed here to the Inova Fairfax Medical Campus and was
03:03 immediately taken to this trauma room.
03:10 There's always going to be a higher risk of infection when you have an open wound
03:14 versus something that was just closed and never penetrated the skin. Say there
03:18 was grass or dirt or what-have-you in his wound. The wound didn't appear to be
03:22 very large but you never know. We look at a fracture pattern and it tells us how it
03:28 happened to a certain degree. It tells a story.
03:32 And his spinal fracture clearly said that his leg was twerked.
03:38 You're gonna have emergency surgery and you're down in a hospital and on a
03:44 stretcher. Like none of that's to be expected. I mean, I'm still in my football
03:48 gear. They said it'll be fine. You're gonna go in there. Maybe be in the
03:53 hospital for two days. You know, do a little bit of rehab while he's in the
03:57 hospital and then be on your way.
04:02 Woke up in the room. Leg obviously completely wrapped up and bandaged up.
04:13 He had two plates and multiple screws for the tibia. His fibula was also broken
04:19 and we plated that with a third plate. Knowing what we started with and what we
04:23 ended up with, we were ecstatic. He was begging me, "Can I just go home? I feel
04:27 all right." And so I went through his pain regimen and I said, "You know what? You're
04:30 still taking some IV pain medicines." And he said, "I can go home. I'm fine. I'll be
04:34 all right. I can tough it out."
04:37 I'm getting around on crutches and I'm fine and kind of ready to go. And at that
04:43 whole time I'd kind of been running an off-and-on little fever, kind of a mild
04:48 fever. A fever of 101.5 or less is normal. And if I remember, he spiked to 102, 102.3
04:57 or something. And so they do blood cultures. So the trauma docs went back
05:01 and they looked at the wound and everything looked fine. The leg looked
05:05 normal, was beat up, but it didn't look infected.
05:12 He just progressively got worse. And Alex's fever is through the roof and
05:20 his blood pressure is dropped. Alex is not Alex anymore.
05:26 It's test after test after test. I get a call then that his blood cultures are
05:37 positive, meaning he has bacteria in his blood. And if that bacteria in your blood
05:41 causes issues like blood pressure issues and heart rate issues, you become septic.
05:45 And that's when things get serious. How bad?
05:50 Uncontrolled, you could die.
05:54 I remember them doctors coming in and unwrapping my leg in the middle of the
06:05 night. And clearly they were alarmed by something. We had all seen his incisions
06:10 and wounds the day before and they looked like traumatized leg we've seen a
06:13 million times. It was a impressive and dramatic difference.
06:19 It was black. I mean the blisters were huge. It was something you wouldn't even,
06:26 I mean I couldn't fathom seeing this in like a war movie. They took him back into
06:33 surgery, opened all that up. And I will never ever forget this as those surgeons
06:38 walked out and said, "Well we're in life-saving mode now and leg-saving mode,
06:43 but it's in that order."
06:46 [Music]
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