It's been nearly two weeks since the tragic and senseless shooting that killed three Michigan State University students and wounded five others.
One of the doctors who went right into the hospital just moments after the shooting is now speaking out and describing that night, exclusively to 7 Action News
Dr. Christopher Abood said it was like a war zone that night at Sparrow Hospital, but nonetheless, his team was ready for whatever was going to come their way.
"I actually got the notification from Michigan State, 'active Shooter,' before I got the call from the hospital," Abood said.
That alert was shocking, and Abood knew he had to jump into action. He was home with his 16-year-old son at the time.
"It really hits close to home because my son was still at home," he said.
As president and CEO of Compass Health and one of five neurosurgeons at Sparrow Hospital, Abood knew he needed to get to the frontline as quickly as possible.
"I was rushing to leave my house to help these students and I am also thinking about my son and family who are still at home, and the walk path which turned out to be right in the walk path of the shooter as he left campus."
When Abood's son was safe at his sister's house, he arrived at the hospital and it was all hands-on deck inside Sparrow's ER.
"We had multiple trauma victims coming in all at once. We had multiple members of the trauma teams," Abood said.
"There were several victims, and we were all seeing each of us one or two of the victims. Then it turned out we had to go to surgery so a couple of us went to surgery and one of our surgeons stayed in the emergency room, so it really was a team effort trying to manage all of this," he added.
Hospitals, doctors and first responders train for events like this to make sure they're ready if a situation like this ever happens.
"We were fortunate enough to have the number of people. You have to triage the victims and the people and make decisions on what needs to go emergent-ally what isn't emergent, what can be treated and sent to the ICU," Abood said.
Those decisions were done rapidly because it was a matter of life or death, multiple operating rooms were already prepped and ready to go for the students who needed emergency surgery.
"What went right was the vital communications right from the very beginning between the emergency room staff, emergency room doctors, trauma team, and the initial assessment of these students. We were fortunate to have our team available here and in town which is critical to have the people," he said. "Being able to have the operating rooms immediately available and that was a coordinated response all the way from the CEO of the Hospital Dr. Denny Martin. Dr. Martin had all the teams lined up and he was actually here the whole time managing the different teams."
In Abood's 30 years of practice, he said nothing can prepare you mentally for seeing and being in chaos.
"I don't think there's any trick or special way of getting over or seeing these types of events, especially children who have been injured or hurt in these kinds of incidents," he said. "So there isn't any easy way to you know go home to make sure your family is okay and try to sleep and that doesn't happen easily. It usually takes several days to start to feel normal again from these kinds of events."
The one thing Abood relied on after all the chaos was his faith.
"Everybody supports everybody. I think that's the way you get through it and family, faith, and I found myself going to Church a little more last week and that's how we get through it," he said.
