A Month After Boston, Ind. Woman Faces Last Surgery

It has been almost a month since a bomb exploded seconds after Beth Roche watched her daughter cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon, and the Highland, Ind. woman is preparing for one last surgery to reconstruct her knee.

"I'm a little afraid," Roche said this morning. "I'm so taken care of here."

Roche has spent the past month in hospitals, most recently at the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston.

She said she has been overwhelmed with the support and quality of her care, starting with the first responder who shielded her from debris from a second bomb that went off 10 seconds after the first blast.

She hasn't been able to identify the man who came to her side.

"Thank you. Thank you for possibly saving my leg and possibly saving my life," Roche said through tears. "This man was right there, he wasn't afraid to come by my side. He was there."

Just before the first explosion, Roche had looked at a friend's iPhone to check her daughter's marathon time: 3:59:52, seven seconds better than her daughter's goal.

Roche was ecstatic, eager to be the first one to break the news to her. But seconds later, a bomb went off near her as she turned to face a store front.

"Next thing I know I'm down on the ground, I'm looking at my knee," Roche said. "It was surreal... I'm looking at my knee, my pant leg is wide open... My knee is like a sardine can. I know I was in shock because I didn't feel anything at that moment. But it was all white and I could feel liquid pouring down my leg."

Roche remembers being unable to run away like everyone else. She remembers feeling desperately alone as crowds rushed inside store fronts and closed the door.

The first time she felt pain was when someone hastily tied a tourniquet around her left leg.

She was put in an ambulance with another man, not knowing where her daughter or husband were. A doctor at the hospital told her she would be OK. She remembers an oxygen mask over her face.

Four hours of surgery later and she still had her leg, although metal rods -- called an external fixator -- made her look "like a robot."

But her family was there when she woke up.

"I woke up and my daughter and husband were there," Roche said. "What a relief to know they were OK, they were alive."

Her attending physician at Spaulding, Dr. David Crandell, said that after her surgery on Friday she will start more aggressive rehabilitation to regain movement in her left knee and leg. "She's looking at a year of rehabilitation," Crandell said.

Roche said prayers from back home in Indiana and Chicago, where her son lives, have helped her carry on. She said she looks forward to visiting Boston, where her daughter Rebecca Roche lives, many times in the future.

"I want to see the harbor when I can walk back on the path of the harbor," Roche said. "I want to come back for the Boston marathon. I'm not afraid of what happened. I feel like it's something that just happened . . .I'm on the journey and I still have a ways to go on this journey, but I have friends that are going to help me along the way."

ehirst@tribune.com

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