|
|
|
| |
News - Tri-City Medical Center, Oceanside California USA |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Tri-City Medical Center |
| Marine returns to Tri-City, gifts for medical team |
| Date : - 12/06/2009 |
Marine Maj. Christopher Gillette, center, returned to Tri-City Medical Center this week to thank sta
OCEANSIDE ---- Months after doctors, nurses and Navy corpsmen cleared a massive blood clot from his pulmonary artery, a Camp Pendleton Marine recently returned to Tri-City Medical Center to deliver a thank you straight from the battlefields of Iraq.
Maj. Christopher Gillette, 52, dropped by the hospital Tuesday with an envelope full of "challenge coins," solemnly pressing them into the hands of the doctors and nurses who he said saved his life when he came into the hospital's emergency room after collapsing at Camp Pendleton on March 20.
He explained that the circular totems, which have the traditional Marine insignia on one side and outline of Iraq on the other, are traditionally given to troops in units on the front lines who an inspecting general observes to exhibit "superior performance."
"Given what they did for me, I thought it was a pretty fitting tribute," Gillette said. "I was really just awestruck by how everyone handled the situation."
Gillette, a Marine Corps reservist who returned to active duty in 2007, recently completed a one-year stint as protocol officer for Maj. Gen. John Kelly in the Al Anbar province of Iraq. Gillette said he started feeling chest pains and shortness of breath shortly after his 20-hour flight home to Camp Pendleton in late January.
Two months later, he said, he was on the way to visit the general on base, when a climb up several flights of stairs left him winded. The general ordered him to an on-base medical clinic, and he barely made it there before collapsing.
"They say I literally collapsed through the door of the clinic," Gillette said.
At first, Pendleton doctors and corpsmen suspected Gillette had suffered a stroke. He was transferred to Tri-City Medical Center in Oceanside because Pendleton's naval hospital did not have the necessary stroke treatment capabilities.
In Tri-City's emergency room a doctor quickly determined that it was not stroke, but a pulmonary embolism that brought the Marine down.
Dr. Justin Gooding was the interventional radiologist who threaded a catheter through Gillette's heart and into his pulmonary artery, to remove what he called a massive blood clot that was preventing blood flow to the officer's lungs.
He said it was possible, using a special probe, to directly inject the clot-dissolving medicine at the precise point of blockage. The catheter stayed implanted for two days, slowly working away at the obstacle.
"This definitely could have been fatal," Gooding said, noting that the mortality rate for pulmonary embolism is about 50 percent.
Gooding said that pulmonary embolisms generally occur in patients who have had to sit still for long periods of time, which can lead to clots in lower legs. In Gillette's case, the long plane flight likely caused blood clots.
Gooding said that a run Gillette later undertook on base likely sent clots in his legs pumping through the rest of his vascular system, eventually passing through his heart and into the arteries that circulate through the lungs.
Gillette, who will soon be discharged from the Marine Corps, has been meticulous about delivering a challenge coin and a thank you to each Marine and civilian who helped save his life, both on base and at Tri-City.
The gesture has been appreciated.
"This is something that we don't ask for, and we don't expect, but it's very nice," Gooding said.
"To have somebody actually come back, it just tickles you, because it doesn't happen very often," added registered nurse Angie Perez, who also participated in Gillette's care. |
|
| Reference : - www.tri-citymed.com |
| Back To List |
|
|
|
|
|
| Copyright © 2024 Medical Tour Information All Rights Reserved |
|