Unsinkable surgeon beats storm
It was an epic journey from home to hospital, and the drama didn’t stop there.
The phone rang at Dr. Stephen Kimmel’s house in Dickinson. A teenage boy at Pearland Medical Center was in terrible pain and needed emergency surgery. There was no time to waste and no one available there. Could he do it?
“Sure,” the pediatric general surgeon replied.
This was Saturday around 10 p.m.
Yes, it was really starting to pour outside, and there were all sorts of dire weather warnings squawking from the TV, but Clear Lake Regional Medical Center was close. The boy would make the 12-mile trip by ambulance; Kimmel would make the quick trip by car. He figured it’d be easy.
The fierce tropical storm decided otherwise.
There was roughly a sixhour window to repair the teen’s condition before it worsened and caused permanent damage. One hour had already passed by the time 16-year-old Jacob Terrazas was loaded into the ambulance in Pearland.
Kimmel had not gone far when he hit a vast lake of water on the road. He could tell it was deep, but in the dark he couldn’t tell how deep, so he turned back.
“I’m not going to be good to anyone if I get stuck,” he thought.
Back home, he called the hospital’s chief medical officer, who in turn called the Dickinson volunteer fire department to pick him up. Around 1:30 a.m., two soaking wet firefighters arrived at his door — without a truck. The three of them started sprinting through the rising water before being picked up by a fire station truck conveniently equipped with a canoe.
They set off again, drove as far as they could before getting swamped. They then hopped in the boat and began paddling toward the hospital.
That’s when the firefighters spotted people stranded on the top of half-submerged cars. They peeled off in the boat to help, and Kimmel ran the rest of the way in the blinding rain, sloshing through the hospital door around 2:30 a.m.
“I looked like a drowned rat,” he said.
Meanwhile, Terrazas was having his own adventure. The ambulance speeding toward Clear Lake stalled on Interstate 45 when it became swamped, taking on water like a sinking bathtub toy. Jacob and his mom, Yesenia Terrazas, stood shivering and drenched on the side of the highway until rescued by a Webster Fire Department truck. They arrived at the hospital not far ahead of Kimmel, and Jacob was quickly prepped for surgery. The window of opportunity was 30 minutes from slamming shut.
The operation went off without a hitch, but the tale was not yet over.
A few hours later, Kimmel called his wife to check on her and the kids. She said there was 5 feet of water in their house. He called the U.S. Coast Guard, which sent a boat down his street to get them. Once reunited, they all slept on the floor of his office that night.
Now in a hotel, Kimmel said he was warned it might be six months before they can move home. So he’s searching for a rental.
But everyone is OK. Jacob is recovering nicely, and Kimmel has a story for his future grandkids.
jenny.deam@chron.com twitter.com/jenny_deam