WEST PALM BEACH — Some days, it looked like Layla Rogan would spend the last moments of her life in a bed at St. Mary’s Medical Center.

She was barely alive last May 22 after an ATV crash near Lake Worth Beach in which she hit a parked car at 55 mph. The wreck left the girl, then 15, with a traumatic brain injury.

Then one day last June, Rogan woke up but was unable to speak. Her injury left her unable to talk, walk or eat. She says she had no memory of the crash or any idea she’d lost a month of her life.

Rogan was flown to Atlanta and spent two months at the Shepherd Center, which helps people with brain injuries recover their lives. Now she’s back at Palm Beach Central High School – and on the varsity cheerleading team.

On May 17, she returned to St. Mary’s to thank the doctors, nurses and EMS team who helped her begin her recovery as part of National Trauma Survivors day.

“I was able to walk out of the hospital, when I wasn’t supposed to be able to, with my family by my side,” said Rogan, who is now 16 and walks without any sign of trouble. “I went back to school when the doctors told me I wouldn’t be able to, and I made honor roll not once, not twice, but three times.”

Trauma Survivors Day a chance to thank hospital, rehab staffs

Rogan was one of dozens of people who took part in Trauma Survivors day events both at St. Mary’s and at Delray Medical Center, which house Palm Beach County’s two Level 1 trauma centers. Both help to heal people who have been injured in shootings, crashes and other incidents.

“The purpose is to bring awareness to not only trauma but also to interconnect the survivors with the health care providers and other people,” said Dr. Robert Borrego, St. Mary’s longtime trauma center director, who helped to organize the celebration at the Hanley Center, on the hospital’s campus along 45th Street.

“People can hear how these things happen and have affected people’s lives, not only the person that was in it but their friends and family.”

Jupiter High student's survival began with his own actions

Rogan wasn’t the only survivor there paying gratitude. There were young children such as Memphis Hamman, a Lake Worth Beach-area girl who suffered a spinal-cord injury in a wreck that has left her paralyzed, and Casey Bicknell, now in his 30s, who was left with a traumatic brain injury after a 2010 wreck at the now-closed Palm Beach International Raceway.

There also was Hudson Domb, a Jupiter High School student who was unsure if he was going to survive after his leg got struck by a boat propeller on Jan. 21, 2021. He knew there was a good chance he wouldn’t make it if he didn’t act fast to stop the bleeding. Using a skill he learned in his medical class a year prior, Domb, then 15, used a rope as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, saving his own life.

The incident, which took place in the Loxahatchee River near Pennock Point, caused him to lose a tremendous amount of blood and the doctors at St. Mary’s wanted to amputate his leg, but Domb didn’t want to give up.

After 28 reconstruction surgeries and regrowing his tibia, Domb was back to doing what he loves in just eight months — boating and fishing.

“I’m really fortunate to be where I am today,” said Domb, now 17. “I never thought I would be fishing and boating again. Thank you to everyone who helped me get to where I am today.”