Crash changes perspective
Nurse offers thanks, and a plea, to those who helped him heal after car wreck
BY JIM HOWE
After a head-on crash that totaled his car and landed him in the intensive care unit, David E. Cadet wants to share what stands out to him:
- He is grateful for the care he got at Upstate — from the emergency department, or ED, to surgery to the intensive care unit, or ICU, to rehabilitation — as well as to the EMTs, police, family, friends and co-workers who all played a part in his recovery.
- He is giving back to the community to show that gratitude.
- He wants people, especially health care workers, to make self-care a priority, since neglecting his own care likely played a role in his accident.
![Cadet in the surgical intensive care unit at Upstate after his head-on crash. Photo courtesy of David Cadet](../images/2024/content/041724-cadet-icu.jpg)
“Upstate saved my life, from the quick action from the ED, on to the surgical procedures, keeping my family and myself updated with the level of care, what’s next to come, the treatment level. I was very proud.”
Cadet was an ICU/critical care nurse at Upstate for five years.
He singled out the trauma team in the surgical ICU, where more people took care of him than he could keep track of, including former colleagues.
Two years after the accident, his list of people to thank is lengthy, including surgeons who operated on his eye and shattered ankle and family members whose support and medical expertise came in handy, including his younger brother who is also a nurse practitioner; his father, a retired respiratory therapist who was a doctor in Haiti; and his mother, who is a retired nurse.
![Cadet with fellow nurse Christina Accorso when he returned to light duty after the accident. Accorso had previously worked with Cadet in the medical ICUs and the burn unit. Photo courtesy of David Cadet](../images/2024/content/041724-cadet-accorso.jpg)
Cadet was almost home on Syracuse’s East Side when he fell asleep at the wheel in December 2021. He had been doing double duty, returning from a night of travel duty in Rochester. He crashed into an oncoming truck and was rushed to Upstate University Hospital with injuries to his head and chest as well as an eye, an Achilles tendon, and an ankle. He spent about 10 days in the ICU, then another nine days in rehabilitation before leaving the hospital.
It would be another 10 months of rehabilitation before he could go back to work part time, and four more months until he could go full time. He currently works as a travel nurse in psychiatry in Syracuse, which gives him more free time to provide CPR education and first aid training throughout the community, through #Pump4ABeat and Kontinuity Healthiness and Wellness LLC, both of which he founded.
“That’s my way of giving back, saying my thank-you,” he said.
A lesson his accident and stint as a patient taught him, he says, is the need for people to take better care of themselves, especially those who work in health care.
![The 2017 Kia Sportage LX Cadet was driving. Photo courtesy of David Cadet](../images/2024/content/041724-cadet-kia.jpg)
Do medical professionals neglect their own care?
“At the sacrifice of taking care of others, at times, we do,” he says. “That’s not to say we are doing this purposely, but we just need to remain cognizant of ourselves,” he says, and not neglect things like proper rest and exercise.
His falling asleep while driving showed him that he had overextended himself and did not prioritize his own health. The accident was the consequence, he says.
Cadet’s only visible reminder from that accident is a slight limp. He can’t run yet, but he is upbeat about working at that and at how far he has come.
“Upstate is a great hospital to work in. It’s a great facility. And I want to say that not only as an employee, but as a patient: The care is really next to none. I’m very pleased with the level of care I received.”
This article appears in the 2024 Upstate Health magazine, Issue 1.