Crash survivor Dr. Pablo Rodriguez delights in life's daily tasks, but he very much wants to resume his surgical practice.

10:11 AM EDT on Friday, October 14, 2005

BY KAREN LEE ZINER
Journal Staff Writer

PAWTUCKET -- You can tell right away that Pablo Rodriguez is reclaiming his health, after the February car crash in Dallas that nearly killed him.

Journal photo / Bill Murphy

Dr. Pablo Rodriguez goes to his Pawtucket office every day, where he does his morning radio show and takes phone calls. But he has yet to resume seeing patients.

The wan look, evident when the high-profile physician and community leader began reentering public life several months ago, is gone. He has color in his cheeks. He limps, but his step is spry. His usual gregariousness and humor are in full swing.

But whether Rodriguez will be able to fully resume his 20-year career as an ob-gyn doctor is unclear, he said yesterday during an interview at his private practice, Women's Care Inc., in Pawtucket.

"I can't do surgery right now. But I'm hoping. That's my aim. I'm going to do everything possible," said Rodriguez, who today will be master of ceremonies at the International Institute of Rhode Island's annual meeting.

The car crash, caused by a drunken driver (the accident also claimed his niece's life and injured other family members), left Rodriguez with radial nerve palsy in his right hand.

"'The nerve that feeds the arm was bruised, or even cut, in portion, by the fracture" to his right arm. "So I lost the ability to lift my wrist and extend my fingers." He is hoping a hand surgeon may be able to help.

Rodriguez goes to his Pawtucket office every day, where he does his morning radio show on WELH (88.1 FM), opens the mail and takes phone calls. But he has not yet begun seeing patients, nor set a date for doing so.

"I haven't even tried yet to see what I can do. I'm afraid that I'm not going to be able to do it -- that I'm not going to be proficient," he said.

"In gynecology you have to touch people, you have to examine them in a certain way. I want to do it right. I don't want to just go through the motions and pretend that I'm doing a good job. And I think it's also the fear of, I'll be able to do this, but not be able to do that," he said.

This is difficult for the associate chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Women & Infants Hospital and medical director of Planned Parenthood.

Rodriguez said he has briefly thought about options, such as consulting.

"And you know. I can always do the radio, do a lot of other things. But I don't want to. I just don't want to," he said, with a determined smile. "I want to do surgery, do abortions, do everything that I was doing before."

Rodriguez said, "I never thought that I would miss the work this much. I just never, ever, ever, thought it possible. I mean, it's almost like, I was almost fantasizing about the worst day at work I ever had in my life and wishing I was there again," just so he could be doing what he loves.

That said, Rodriguez emphasizes that he's grateful to have survived.

He has resumed attending meetings of the many nonprofits he is involved with, including his last few months as chairman of the board of the Rhode Island Foundation. He also goes to physical therapy in Warwick every day.

Since his latest surgery in August, to reverse a colostomy and close his abdomen ("my belly has been open since March, with a skin graft just holding my guts together"), he has made great physical and emotional strides.

"Every day," he said, "every day is better."

The accident occurred on a Dallas highway, when, according to the police, a drunken driver slammed into the airport shuttle that Rodriguez and his family, and his wife's sister's family, were riding in.

The two families were on their way to the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport after vacationing together in Belize.

Rodriguez's niece, Brianna Titcomb, 13, was killed. Rodriguez suffered a lacerated liver and colon, as well as a broken arm and broken hip.

Kayla Rae Profitt, the woman charged in the accident, "is in jail," Rodriguez said, and awaiting sentencing. She has tried to reach out to his family, "and while I believe she is really sorry for what she caused, I don't think any of us are ready to talk with her yet."

Rodriguez said he has almost no memory of his waking hours at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.

But he does remember the dreams he had while lying in a coma for three weeks. Dreams so real, that he feels like those events actually happened.

Some of them "were very funny," he says.

He became a reporter for a Sunday morning talk show in Washington. He was appointed surgeon general. He produced a Broadway play "about the Puerto Rican experience during the early years of U.S. intervention." He wrote a cartoon "about immigrant superheroes."

But the central theme concerned the moon, and a crypt full of prayers.

Rodriguez "was an anthropologist in this crypt, and all the prayers of the world would come into the crypt. Some were written, some were statues, some were in a vase, or on a quilt. . . ."

The crypt was in a rock in the Himalayas. And every two or three years, the moon would align in such a way that the rock would open, and there was about a 45-minute window to get in and out.

"I was kind of coming to, but I couldn't interpret what was going on in a rational way. That was the merry-go-round. It was like coming to this point, and 'Wait wait wait wait wait! I can wake up and get out of here!' And then I'd plunge in deep again," waiting for the moon to come back around.

Just before Rodriguez regained consciousness, "I felt like I was in a deep ocean. Like I felt the water going whsshhhsshh . . . and it was like someone grabbed me by the shirt and pulled. And then I popped out into the air."

In reality, Rodriguez at that moment was lying in his Dallas hospital bed, and Diane Rodriguez was standing over him, suctioning fluid from his airway. He woke up, "and that was when I came to."

Now he's finding joy in the small things.

"Over the last six months, I've been celebrating things I've always taken for granted. I mean, scratching my nose," he says, laughing.

"You know, to be able to splash my face with water. To be able to shave, to be able to eat with my right hand, to be able to just go up and down stairs. Every activity of daily life becomes a celebration for me. It changes you. It really does."

Karen Lee Ziner can be reached at 277-7375 or kziner [at] projo.com

JOIN TODAY'S CHAT with Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, part of a continuing series this week to mark Hispanic Heritage Month. Visit from noon to 1 p.m., or submit your questions now. You may also view transcripts of previous chats, at:

http://projo.com/livechat/hispanicchat/