Patient Story: Sally Loughridge Busch
For Sally Loughridge Busch, art is more than just a hobby — it’s a piece of her identity. Picking up a paintbrush has helped her conquer both life-threatening health issues and daily stressors that are out of her control. Painting serves as a way to express her thoughts and share them with others, without needing to say a word.
As a clinical psychologist for over 25 years, she knew that the arts can provide a significant expressive avenue. Personally, she herself discovered how profoundly art could help when she had breast cancer in 2010. In 2016, experiencing a stroke and car accident simultaneously became another opportunity to use artistic expression as a coping method.
“I love to paint Maine’s rugged, organic beauty, especially along the coast,” said Sally, who lives in South Bristol. “The intersections of the natural elements — sky, water, and land — inspire me to portray my emotional response to change, whether sudden or seasonal.”
Now an accomplished artist, Sally has painted hundreds of pieces that have been exhibited in galleries across Maine. She’s taught aspiring artists, written and illustrated two books, and continues to create oil and soft pastel paintings on a daily basis.
“People say my work is expressive. It’s representational, so you might see the ocean or a pine tree, but it’s not photographic. I’m not trying to replicate literally what I see. I’m trying to express all I feel about what I see,” said Sally in a recent conversation.
She had come to visit the LifeFlight of Maine crew in Lewiston, because ten years ago she almost lost her ability to paint. She almost lost her life, were it not for LifeFlight and a team of medical professionals who responded one summer evening.
On August 16, 2016, Sally was driving home to South Bristol after dropping her sister off at the Portland International Jetport. The last thing she remembers from the day is passing the sign for the Montsweag Flea Market on Route One and thinking she was almost home.
Sally later learned she suffered a stroke while behind the wheel and got in a major car accident. Her car rolled multiple times, and she had to be extricated from the vehicle by first responders. Fortunately, no one else was seriously hurt. LifeFlight was dispatched to transport Sally from the scene to Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, which was a Level I Trauma Center at the time.
While first responders waited for LifeFlight to arrive, Wendy Williams, a Wiscasset Paramedic, worked to stabilize Sally and prepare her for the helicopter flight. Sally had broken her neck, sternum, wrist, and part of her back.
“One of the things that impresses me so much is the coordination and collaboration among all the emergency responders. I mean, certainly, LifeFlight. But before that, the ambulances and police, and whoever’s dealing with traffic and helping the hundreds of people I inconvenienced with the accident,” shared Sally.
LifeFlight flight nurse Patrick Perrault, flight paramedics Patrick Underwood and Dave White, and helicopter pilot Karl Hatlemark soon arrived at the scene. They provided care for Sally as she was flown to Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC) in Lewiston, where she later underwent surgery to fuse part of her spine. She remained in the hospital for more than five weeks.
“I was very close to losing everything, and certainly my mobility,” said Sally.
Over the next few weeks, she was moved from the intensive care unit to the inpatient acute rehab at CMMC. Sally received intensive physical, occupational, and speech therapy as part of her recovery.
After she was released from the hospital, she returned home to continue recovering. She soon resumed meeting with an art group she had been in for years and turned to art to help her body and mind heal.
“I went back to art as much as I could because I knew that it was a way to express my feelings,” shared Sally.
About a month after she was discharged, Sally decided she wanted to visit both the rehab facility where she had stayed in the hospital and meet with LifeFlight crew members. As a thank-you to those who helped her, she brought one of her original oil paintings to donate to the hospital.
“The painting is ‘Sun at the Island Inn.’ I picked this one because it feels hopeful to me, the sunflowers blooming high in front of the Island Inn on Monhegan Island,” shared Sally.
by Sally Loughridge.
During her visit, she stopped by LifeFlight of Maine’s office at CMMC and spoke with the crew members who were on shift.
“I remember them offering me a chance to go out and see a helicopter, but I declined it. I really just wanted to talk to them,” shared Sally. “And from then on, I started donating money every year to LifeFlight because I realized how important it was for not just me, but so many people in our unique, rural, wonderful state.”
In addition to making financial donations, in the ten years since her transport Sally has kept up with LifeFlight through the organization’s monthly newsletters and Dispatches magazine. After reading stories about other patients, she decided she wanted to share her own and reconnect with the crew who provided her care a decade ago.
This past spring, Sally contacted our Grateful Patient Program coordinator who helped to arrange a meeting with two members of her flight crew — Patrick Perrault and Patrick Underwood — both of whom have now been clinicians with LifeFlight for a decade.
“I was still on clinical orientation when I first met Sally,” shared Patrick Underwood. “I am humbled she reached out to LifeFlight to reconnect and update us on her life since the accident. It’s not often we hear from patients after we bring them to the hospital, so to be able to visit ten years later and see how incredible she’s doing, it’s very special.”
“I’ve always been grateful since I knew how they helped save my life. I think my gratitude is even greater now because I can think back over the last ten years,” said Sally. “I could have died easily. Or, I could have been a quadriplegic if I hadn’t been taken care of properly around that neck fracture.”
Sally said she’s especially grateful as she looks back on all that she’s been able to experience and accomplish over the past decade — including spending time with her children and grandchildren — which she knows wouldn’t have been possible without the critical care she received from first responders, LifeFlight clinicians, and her doctors at CMMC.
“I wouldn’t have known my younger granddaughter much at all,” shared Sally, whose youngest granddaughter was just over one-year-old at the time of the accident. “And the older one, when I got hurt, she was eleven. I can be a part of their lives, and I can learn about them growing up and how wonderful they are. And I can still know my kids. It is something to be grateful for.”
Sally recently looked back on the oil paintings she created in the months after her transport — her private journey of healing, displayed for all to see.
“Even if I didn’t have the words, I could still express myself,” said Sally. “And I know that painting helped me to find ways to articulate or recognize how I was feeling.”
If you’re interested in joining our Grateful Patient Program or sharing your LifeFlight story, please reach out to Lauren Cowan at lcowan@lifeflight.me.
