PARENTS PRAISE TRAUMA TEAM FOR HELPING SON TO SURVIVE.

Byline: Lisa Van Proyen Daily News Staff Writer

Seven months ago, after their son slammed into a parked car while he whizzed down a hill in Saugus on his skateboard, the odds against his survival were so great that grief-stricken Patrick and Patricia Hanrion were deciding whether to donate his organs.

Michael Hanrion, then 16, suffered a major fracture of his skull, and a blood clot formed under the membrane that covers his brain. A large portion of bone also was shattered, his mother said.

Michael, now 17, sometimes struggles with some loss of short-term memory. But he is in school at Saugus High and competing on his swim team. He will attend his prom Saturday night, his mother said.

His parents attribute their son's swift recovery to God, Michael's family and friends - and Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. The parents sing the praises of the hospital's trauma center and its team of doctors.

``The thing that boggles my mind is the fact that everyone works as a team. There was not one glitch along the way,'' Patricia Hanrion said.

The first three hours are most critical in treatment of a head injury, said Hanrion, a registered nurse who has worked for 32 years at hospitals throughout Los Angeles County.

``It's just a smooth run all the way through the trauma center,'' she said.

She and her husband have volunteered to give brief testimonial speeches at a banquet to be held Saturday after the hospital's 24th annual golf tournament.

The tournament is aimed at raising funds to help buy equipment for the trauma center and to underwrite the costs to care for uninsured patients, said Diana Vose, executive director of the Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital Health Foundation.

Henry Mayo is one of only a dozen hospitals remaining in the Los Angeles County trauma system. Others have fallen to budget shortfalls.

Last year, the local trauma center admitted 341 patients.

Michael Hanrion also was able to get rehabilitation therapy at the local hospital, where he learned to walk again and strengthened his memory and mobility skills, his mother said.

``He was like a picture on the wall. The picture was crooked, and it gets straighter and straighter,'' she said.

A couple of months ago, he went back in for a second surgery on his skull.

This left him with more problems, such as partial loss of feeling in his left arm, his mother said. But the rehabilitation center helped him gain back movement of the arm.

``He is doing so well - beyond our wildest dreams,'' she said.

Through the staff at Henry Mayo, Michael has learned how to organize his schoolwork better, and he compensates for short-term memory loss by keeping logs and journals about his daily life.

The message his parents intend to convey at the fund-raising event Saturday is how comforting it is to have Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital available locally.

``People don't need to travel out of this valley. We have all that we need here,'' she said. ``The care that he got here was the very best.''