Renan Ozturk seriously injured, but on upswing

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Renan Ozturk, leading climber and filmmaker, was involved in a serious ski accident in Jackson, Wyoming, on March 28. Despite the severity of his injuries, which included a cranial fracture and spinal fractures, he is recovering so well he returned home yesterday. His brain and spinal cord are fortuitously intact.

?I?m mostly feeling grateful to be alive and to have the support from the community,? Ozturk, who turns 31 on April 7, tells us. ?That is a special thing within our climbing and creative groups. People really support each other. At this point I'm not taking anything for granted. Just got back from the hospital world but am still not feeling up to being sitting and dealing in the upright world.?

Ozturk, a member of the Camp 4 Collective of filmmakers as well as a North Face athlete, was filming for a collaboration between his group and Teton Gravity Research at the time of his fall. On film, from a prone position in a hospital room in Jackson shortly after the accident, Ozturk tells his friend and Camp 4 Collective partner Tim Kemple, ?I got served in a couloir trying to follow Jeremy Jones and Jimmy Chin and Xavier De La Rue ? it?s no big surprise that I got worked by some of the best big mountain riders out there.? (See video below.)

?It was hard there,? someone in the background of the film says, perhaps unnecessarily, of the terrain.

Amee Hinkley, Ozturk?s partner, posted on Facebook on Tuesday, April 5, before leaving the trauma center at the Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center that Renan was already showing strength, ?taking some steps without a walker, enjoying Internet use from his bed, and slowly ridding himself of various IVs. His spirits are good and his pain is somewhat manageable.?

She tells Rock and Ice: "The docs were very open about the fact that people who sustain injuries such as his usually don't make the kind of strides that he has. He is very lucky, and lucky for us the mountain gods decided not to take him on that day. He'll have to wear a neck brace for the next three months and possibly have rehab after that, but that's a small price to pay for life."

An artist, filmmaker and professional climber, Ozturk is a 2002 graduate of Colorado College. He and Hinkley, a painter, leather worker, and massage therapist who graduated from Cabrillo College, are based in Boulder after years of climbing travel and stints in Crested Butte, Moab and various California locales.

A report by Jimmy Chin, posted by Hinkley?who credits Chin and the Jackson Ski Patrol with saving Renan?s life?reads:

?Renan took a fall over a cliff band while filming and skiing with Jeremy Jones, Xavier De La Rue and myself in the sidecountry at Jackson Hole. He hit his head on the way down and suffered a depressed cranial fracture, fractured his c2 and c7 and partially collapsed a lung. I was with him for the first 20 minutes before the Jackson Hole Ski Patrol arrived. They performed a flawless extraction and got him out of a tough backcountry location in short order, probably saving his life and certainly preserving his compromised neck and back.?

Chin describes Ozturk as lucid throughout most of the process. He was taken to a mountain clinic and then a hospital in Jackson, from which he was flown to the trauma center in Idaho Falls.

?Renan had full sensation and mobility in his hands and feet upon arrival at the clinic,? the Chin report continues. ?The doctors all agreed, based on the circumstances, he was very lucky he did not damage his spinal cord or brain. After several CAT scans, x-rays and other assessments, the doctors explained that while he had fractured his c2 and c7, none of the bone was displaced and his spinal cord was intact and undamaged. Since there was no displacement in his c2, c7 or compromise to his spinal cord, they decided no surgery was necessary on his neck or back. Instead, they focused on a craniotomy, essentially cleaning up the hole in his head. They finished the surgery around 1am last night and it went well. This morning the doctors found a clot in one of his vertebral arteries going up to his brain. They completed a minor procedure to resolve this complication, placing a coil type stint which permanently clots this artery, preventing strokes and seizures in the present and future. (Some people are born with only one and it is not going to effect him at all to have this artery stinted). Lastly he had reconstructive surgery to remove some necrotic (dead tissue) from the laceration on his skull. The worst seems to be over and all the trends in his overall health are moving in the right direction.?

Ozturk is expected to make a full recovery.

He and Hinkley both generously responded to a flood of well wishes by directing friends to a website set up for the benefit of their friend Bean Bowers, a revered climber and alpinist who is fighting cancer: www.beanfever.com.

For more on Ozturk and the Camp� 4 Collective, see http://vimeo.com/camp4collective and an article in rockandice.

For art by Hinkley and Ozturk, see http://ameehinkley.com/home.html and http://renanozturk.sites.livebooks.com/.

Renan - Hospital - 3.28.11 from Camp 4 Collective on Vimeo.

Source: http://rockandice.com/news/1404-renan-ozturk-seriously-injured-but-on-the-upswing

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