Medical miracle

Charles “Bud” Smith had felt these chest pains plenty of times before.

So when he crawled out of bed one morning to sit in his chair, Bud had no idea that doctors would later diagnose a rare condition, recorded just 250 times in medical literature. Nor did he know that a piece of equipment just purchased by Mt. Carmel Regional Medical Center would be his key to survival.

“I just thought it was, you know, acid reflux,” said Bud, a 77-year-old Frontenac resident. “I usually get up and sit in my chair and the pains go away. They didn’t ease up this time.”

So Bud woke up his wife of 56 years, Charlene, and told her she might have to take him to the hospital. She did, taking him to Mt. Carmel, where doctors were able to diagnose an aneurysm in Bud’s celiac artery, the main artery to the intestines, liver, stomach and spleen. Robert Huebner, Bud’s surgeon at Mt. Carmel, said there were only 250 instances of the problem reported in medical literature.

“It doesn’t mean it’s that rare, it’s just that’s what’s reported,” Huebner said. “But we probably won’t see one down here for a long, long time, if ever. It’s a very serious problem, and very rare.”

Bud’s chance to survive typical surgery? A coin flip, 50 percent. And if the aneurysm burst, his mortality rate was 60 percent.

What happened next was the stuff of fairy tales. Doctors were able to put a stent in the artery to redirect flow through it. Sound simple enough? It might have been, except that the surgery’s margin for error was around a quarter of an inch.

“We had to know the exact distance and where everything was,” Huebner said.

Enter the 128-slice CT scanner. Huebner said the machine, which is more precise than the 64-slice CT scanner employed by most hospitals, was able to not just reconstruct an image of Bud’s body, it actually built the image in 3-D. That gave doctors the exact measurements they needed to go in and perform the surgery.

The best part? Mt. Carmel had just purchased and moved the machine into the hospital four days earlier.

“Honestly, I think somebody upstairs was looking out for the guy,” Huebner said. “You couldn’t have planned that any better.”

Huebner said he didn’t know of any other 128-slice CT scanners nearby, except for a possible one in Kansas City.

The surgery was a success. Instead of a serious procedure with a high mortality rate, Bud was finished in 45 minutes. And Bud’s pain, which had become so acute he thought he perforated an ulcer, was immediately gone.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Huebner said. “It was a marriage of several brand new technologies that worked out as well as you could have hoped.”

Since the surgery, Bud’s life has changed. He’s been more active, gardening, helping his daughter remodel her house and woodworking in his spare time. He’s lost weight as well, from 207 pounds to about 194.

“I’ve got a lot more get-up-and-go,” Bud said. “Since they’ve put the stent in, I’ve never had a pain. Not one.”

“I can’t keep up with him anymore,” Charlene said.

As for Bud, he said he won’t consider another hospital.

“I won’t go anywhere else unless they can’t do it here,” Bud said. “If it wasn’t for them, I know I wouldn’t be here today.”

Kevin Flaherty can be reached at kevin.flaherty@morningsun.net or by calling 231-2600 Ext. 134.