Surviving the Storm
(L-r)Hossein Dehghani, MD,
and Matias Sanchez, MD,
Hurricane Katrina caused upheaval for Tulane University medical residents Hossein Dehghani, MD, and Matias Sanchez, MD, but they have landed safely at BIDMC.
The two friends had just started their second year of residency in internal medicine at Tulane University Hospital in August 2005. As Katrina neared, Dehghani began six harrowing days on duty at the hospital before patients were transferred. He recalls, “We lost electricity and running water; we ran out of food. It was a situation I never could have imagined.”
Sanchez evacuated to Houston, where he became part of a medical team at the Astrodome. As he treated patients, he heard stories of lost homes and loved ones. “Post traumatic stress disorder was the most prevalent problem for these people,” Sanchez says.
When the initial crisis was over, Tulane no longer had the patients or facilities to train a full class of residents, but was willing to cover three months of costs elsewhere. With family ties in Boston, Dehghani eventually contacted Eileen Reynolds, MD, director of graduate medical education for BIDMC’s department of medicine. Reynolds championed their cause, and BIDMC became the only hospital in the city to take in displaced medical residents.
With the support of Mark Zeidel, MD, chair of medicine, and the Graduate Medical Education office, Reynolds condensed months of red tape into weeks. When she sent an e-mail to BIDMC’s medicine faculty seeking a three-month home for the residents, she was “flooded with offers.”
Volunteers Theodore Steinman, MD, and Karen Victor, MD, were chosen to host Dehghani and Sanchez at their respective homes. Victor, her husband and their children embraced this “obvious good we could do as a family.” Says Steinman, “My wife and I just knew it was the right thing to do; and it wasn’t just us. BIDMC and the people here were willing to open their hearts and their wallets.”
With slow recovery at Tulane, BIDMC’s department of medicine offered to let Dehghani and Sanchez stay to complete their residencies. When the residents moved to more permanent housing, department members helped them get settled.
Says Dehghani, “The Steinmans took good care of me and were there for me – not just food and a place to stay, but also emotionally, when I needed to talk about everything.”
Adds Sanchez, “Karen Victor opened her house, her refrigerator, her family – so much for a stranger. We were fortunate to end up with somewhere to go and people who cared.”
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BIDMC Patients Aim for Personal Best
As April brings the Boston Marathon and opening day for the Boston Red Sox, two BIDMC patients are redefining the word “champion.”
A triumphant Stickney crosses the finish line.
Marathon Man
A fit, seasoned marathon runner, Chuck Stickney was not concerned when he experienced intermittent stomach pain in early 2003. But during an advanced endoscopic procedure, BIDMC gastroenterologist and Chief of Endoscopy Ram Chuttani, MD, diagnosed a cancerous mass in Stickney’s common bile duct. Chuttani sent Stickney to BIDMC pancreatic surgeon Mark P. Callery, MD, chief of general surgery, who told Stickney that a Whipple procedure – one of the most complicated operations – was his only option.
Fortunately, Stickney was in good hands. BIDMC is one of America’s highest volume pancreatic surgery and endoscopy centers: more than 100 of the 160 major pancreatic operations BIDMC surgeons perform annually are Whipple procedures (with an operative mortality of just 1.6 percent).
Callery successfully reattached the remaining portion of Stickney’s pancreas, bile duct and stomach to the small bowel and remarkably, extensive biopsies of surrounding tissues were cancer free, eliminating the need for treatment with chemotherapy and radiation.
While the six-hour operation to remove the mass and surrounding organs took Stickney out of the running for the 2003 Boston Marathon, for which he had qualified, Stickney promised Callery that a year after surgery, he would run the Marathon. His stunning recovery included competing in two marathons – the first just six months after surgery – before he fulfilled his promise to sprint across the Boston finish line in 2004. He also ran the Boston Marathon last year and is training for 2006.
Stickney credits Callery for his second chance at life and the sport he dearly loves, and can’t say enough about the care he received as a patient at BIDMC.
“You have to approach life with a positive attitude,” says Stickney,
who was two months out of work before he laced up his sneakers and never looked back. “It’s part of the healing process.”
Bentson (above) is training with BeWell staff, including Marlene Dacosta, MA, RCEP, (l), and Jill Plutnicki, MS.
Umpire Stays in the Game
One of the state’s top amateur baseball umpires, and president of Boston’s renowned Park league – the oldest U.S. amateur baseball league – Walter Bentson is battling primary lateral sclerosis. Though not normally life-threatening, the debilitating neurological disease is in the same family as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which claimed baseball Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig.
Bentson credits his BIDMC medical team, David August, MD, Healthcare Associates; Elizabeth Raynor, MD, neurology; and Lissa Kapust, LICSW, behavioral neurology, with helping to control his symptoms. While there are no assurances as to his future, it is the fate of three friends recently claimed by ALS – and their families’ futures – that rest foremost on his mind.
So Bentson is training at BIDMC’s BeWell Tanger Center for Health Management for the 100 Innings of Baseball Spectacular. The 30-hour marathon game, put on by the Boston Men’s Baseball League in partnership with the ALS Association Massachusetts Chapter, benefits Boston Red Sox star Curt Schilling’s “Curt’s Pitch for ALS.”
Bentson plans to be behind the plate when the first pitch is thrown on April 22 at Worcester’s Hanover Insurance Park @ Fitton Field. He will raise funds to start a college scholarship program for children of ALS patients through the ALS Association Massachusetts Chapter.
“We have, right here in Massachusetts, victims [of ALS] whose kids should be able to go to school, ’cause their Dads would have wanted them to go,” he says.