Navy saves teen whose appendix burst on cruise

[RamboLiberal]

Source: MSNBC

A teenager who underwent surgery at sea after her appendix ruptured on a Mexican cruise returned to the mainland Tuesday aboard the U.S. aircraft carrier that came to her rescue.

Laura Montero, 14, fell ill aboard the Dawn Princess off the coast of Baja California. The Bahamian ship sent out a distress call Friday that was answered by the USS Ronald Reagan, which was on training maneuvers about 500 miles away.

The nuclear carrier was the closest ship with a hospital facility, according to a news release from the Navy. It steamed overnight toward the cruise ship, which was about 250 miles northwest of Cabo San Lucas when the call went out.

A helicopter took off from the Reagan around 5 a.m. Saturday to close the final 175-mile gap between the ships. The crew arrived after a 45-minute flight and lowered a medic onto the cruise ship deck in a basket because there wasn't space to land, said Lt. Cmdr. Gregory Leland, the pilot.

Montero, who was on an antibiotic drip, was loaded into a litter basket, lifted into the helicopter and flown back to the Reagan for surgery. Her mother stayed aboard the cruise ship.


Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22313480/

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Way to go Navy!

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. If I'd been her mom, I'd have freaked. Glad they were able to get help!

[ManiacJoe]

5. Mom was tranfered to the carrier later.

According to the radio news this morning.

[applegrove]

2. Love a good news story like that. Lucky teen.

[BOSSHOG]

3. Go NAVY!!

Its not all about killing and blowing up stuff.

[artboy]

4. Good for Her

hahahah on a side note when I was 9-10 (Im 43) now..I rode in the back seat of a station wagon from Pensacola to LaPlace LA, with a ruptured appendix...it happened that night before...woke up my mom and she just thought I had a stomach bug. We were going there the next day to spend Thanksgiving with my Aunt and Uncle and family....finally about 7:30pm, after no eating....could not keep food/liquids down, very high fever, they called the only clinic in the town...the Dr. showed up bout an hour or so later......Mom said he took one look at me and rushed me via ambulance to the nearest hospital...remember now this was back in the early mid 70's.....so Thanksgiving night I had emergency surgery and here I am...but even this past Holiday I still give my mom hell about it....
she feels sooooo bad.....but I luvs her!

[TommyO]

6. I heard this on AP news earlier when listening to Lynn Samuels

I'm very happy Laura and her family, and that there was a ship with hospital facilities near enough to help her. I only hope that her family doesn't receive a bill for $2.5 million for a day's use of an aircraft carrier.

[Vinca]

7. Oops - hope the Navy got it authorized with the health insurance company.

Remember the woman in "Sicko" who was unconscious when dragged out of a car wreck and taken to the hospital by ambulance? The insurance company denied the claim because the unconscious woman didn't get her ambulance ride authorized first.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

8. I'm glad the Navy was near by and decided to help.

GO NAVY
I'll bet their are some military people out there would have blown them off and said if it doesn't have anything to do with the security then hell with them.

Wait till the bills come in...I wonder if they will send(try) the bill to the Montero's?

[nealmhughes]

9. I doubt very seriously that the Reagan will, but don't put anything past the DOD!

Actually, they will probably call the entire event a "training exercise" in helovac to hospital.

Now if anyone wants to imagine scary, try to picture someone getting helovaced from a submarine at sea. . . There is barely room for a basket to hover over the fantail at calm seas. The victim has to be lifted out on a basket and hauled up the control room hatch or the Machinery One hatch and then wait up there or else manhandled down to the fantail. Plus the hatch has been shut for some time and the ladder defines "slippery" when the bridge or fantail is first manned.

Not bad work for a target. Bravo Zulu.

[catnhatnh]

10. I dearly hope the Princess line is paying every dime of the cost...

1950 passengers,900 crew, and they have neither a competent surgeon nor means of evacuation (think:ship's helicopter) on board???Keep in mind that the cruise ship demographic is a nightmare compared to what is found on a carrier. Rather, I expect they'll go with the corporate version of "no one could have imagined" and "Thank God for the US Navy" and hope to toddle off with no expense for cheaping out....and I'll bet they get away with it.

[Thothmes]

13. These are not required

They have physicians on board, but not surgeons. No cruise liner carries a helicopter. None are required by maritime regulations.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

22. Most of the cruise ships are registered in Panama or Liberia.

Or places like that, so they can avoid expensive regulations and requirements for safety and so forth. Read up on it.

[Thothmes]

24. Regulations

Board certified surgeons and embarked helicopters are not a requirement under U.S. Maritime regulations for any vessel. Also, if they call on a U.S. port, they are required to meet a minimum level of safety and sanitation. These ships are boarded regularly by CG inspectors. We have a foreign flag ship in Norfolk, that is forbided to sail until repairs are made. The CG does have the authority to do this.

[Turbineguy]

25. If they do all that

you can wave those $600 cruises goodbye.

In my 25 years at sea I've seen one Medical emergency. We diverted to Honolulu to drop off a cook who had a heart problem.

[gratuitous]

11. Finally a defense expenditure I can support

Another 231 years to the next one.

[Bigmack]

14. Yeah! Imagine how many...

good deeds the US could do in the world with so many ships and planes.

Instead of taking cover and getting the shit blown out of them, the poor bastards in the third world would cheer when they saw US forces.

Imagine pinpoint food bombing.... Marines hitting the beach with food and water in disaster areas.... Navy docs fixing sick kids.

I know... I know... it ain't gonna happen.

Seems like a "Christian" nation like this one could do some of that shit!

[hack89]

17. What the hell are you talking about?

2005 Tsunami, 2005 Pakistani earthquake, 2007 Bangladeshi cyclone are just the latest disaster relief efforts that the US military has been involved in.


Google "us military relief efforts" and educate yourself:

http://www.google.com/search?q=us+military+relief+efforts&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Pakistan:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/pix/b/sa/56535.htm


Tsunami:

The Defense Department brought into action military assets to support relief operations in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives. The Defense Department has been providing vital supplies and logistics to the humanitarian effort since December 30.

* At the height of the DOD humanitarian support activities, there were nearly 16,000 U.S. military personnel in the region focused on this effort.
* There were 26 ships, 58 helicopters, and 43 fixed wing aircraft.
* DOD delivered over 10 million pounds of food and supplies and provided well over 400,000 gallons of fresh water.
* To date, DOD has treated almost 2,500 patients.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/tsunami/

[benh57]

21. Drop in the bucket.

Those are all well and good, but i think he's talking about having 100% of their efforts go to these things, rather than killing helpless iraqis.

[Wcross]

18. How quickly you forget the Navy & Marine Corps response to the tsunami.

The Department of the Navy responded to that disaster & saved lives. They delivered emergency supplies & used the carrier's desalination plant to supply fresh water. Unfortunately, their mission is national defense which doesn't lend itself well to humanitarian work.

[Bigmack]

20. I'm having trouble with the...

"national defense" part of this thing.

For example: How is the Iraq clusterfuck "national defense"? Seems to me that making friends and allies might be a better "national defense" move than blowing the shit out of people. You can't buy friendship, but you can put a firm down payment on it!

Sure, I remember the US response to the tsunami - and other disasters. That's exactly my point! We can do that kind of thing. Hack89's post above contains a lot of US relief efforts, but I wonder what percentage of our "defense" budget is spent on helping rather than killing?

[hack89]

23. Pick bad leader and bad things happen

it's what happens when you take civilian control of the military seriously. Get a democrat in the WH and we can start turning this around.

[lonestarnot]

12. Hell yeah NAVY!

:patriot: :whistle:

[CRK7376]

15. My son's

appendix burst on 9/12/2001. Our peditician had my wife get our son to the emergency room in Winston-Salem asap. Then she called me and I was placed on emergency leave from Fort Bragg and rushed home showing up in Battle Dress Uniform having come directly from a classroom at the Army Special Warfare Center. Needless to say the next few days were hectic, he had a pretty bad infection from the rupture, and then there was the aftermath of the collapse of the twin towers and what we were getting into as a nation. My next stop was Afghanistan.....He's got scare from the surgery and is doing well, I made it back from the "stan" ok and life is as normal as we can make it under the Bush Regime. Our family will always associate 9/11 with my son's appendix...

[LibertyLover]

16. So glad that the Navy was able to help

I had to laugh however. I had read the story on Comcast's home page and in it they had to explain that Montero was a ". . . fair-haired girl with bright blue eyes . . .". What's up with that?

[Turbineguy]

26. They just want you to know

she's not an illegal alien spending her welfare check on a cruise that's all.

But then again, they could be lying! :tinfoilhat:

[tom_paine]

19. Good news, and good for the Navy to be used so.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: