ED Episode Becomes Good Experience for Hoke 5-Year-OId

RAEFORD – Five-year-old Rose Adcock had planned to be a butterfly on Halloween, and her mom had put a good bit of effort into her costume.

Because of an unexpected visit to the Emergency Department at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital-Hoke Campus, though, Rose went trick-or-treating as a mummy and the butterfly will fly another Halloween.

The quick-change episode began the morning before Halloween as Rose and her mother, Anna Trimble, were snuggling in bed before Rose had to get ready for school. The two were playing “a tickle game” when Rose suddenly complained of a sharp pain in her neck.

“She couldn’t sit up; she couldn’t roll over,” says Trimble, who was so alarmed by the sudden change in her daughter’s condition that she called 911.

Within minutes, paramedics from Hoke County EMS were on site and doing their best to comfort the scared little girl and her mother. By that time, Rose was having trouble moving her legs, so she was strapped to a gurney and loaded into an ambulance headed for Moore Regional-Hoke Campus.

At the hospital, daughter and mother were greeted by an Emergency Department staff that Trimble describes as “very nice.”

“We had their total attention and didn’t feel rushed,” Trimble says. “Everyone was so very, very nice.”

Because of the white straps securing Rose to the gurney, Emergency Department physician Matthew Reinhardt, M.D., told her she looked like a “cute little mummy” and asked – to her mother’s dismay – if she planned on being a mummy for Halloween. Once Rose was home and feeling better after an X-ray revealed nothing more serious than a possible pulled muscle, nothing would do but that she follow Dr. Reinhardt’s advice and make her trick-or-treating rounds as a mummy.

“Rose really liked (Dr. Reinhardt),” Trimble says. “You could tell he liked kids.”

Because she wants to encourage good manners in her children, Trimble later suggested that her daughter write a thank you note to Dr. Reinhardt and others in the Emergency Department for taking such good care of her. She penned her thank you and also wished the ED Staff a Happy Halloween.

As Dr. Reinhardt recalls, the incident occurred during his very first shift at work in the new Hoke Campus ED and Rose was one of his last patients of the night.

“I remember Rose looked terrific and was smiling the whole time,” he says. “I believe Mom was very worried and thrilled to see Rose was going to be all right.”

All right she was and is – sore and with a limited range of motion in her neck for the first few days, but now “doing back-flips off my couch,” her mother says.

A kindergartener at Don Steed Elementary School, Rose is part of a military family that moved to the area from Columbus, Ga., and also includes stepdad Josh Trimble, a soldier at Fort Bragg, and 1-year-old Mac in addition to stay-at-home mom Anna.

“She thought (Dr. Reinhardt) was funny,” Trimble says, “and she took his advice about the mummy to heart. They were all so nice. They didn’t make her feel afraid, and she had their undivided attention.”