By Dr. George B. Hightower, M.D., 2026 Candidate for Lt. Governor
My father was stationed at Eielson Air Force Base in Fairbanks in 1950.
Little did anyone know that 76 years later his son would be a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of the State of Alaska. Maybe it was prophetic that Alaska the state and my sister Lorna were born on the same day: January 3, 1959.
Though Lorna has never lived here, she has always claimed Alaska as “her state.”
My 12-year career in the US Navy began as an answer to one burning question: How was I to pay for medical school?
In the mid 1980’s, the US military offered a merit-based scholarship called the Health Profession Scholarship Program (HPSP). Each year, 200 scholarships were awarded nationwide each by the Army, Air force, and Navy to meritorious medical students. The competition is fierce. Medical school applications to the then 32 nationally recognized Medical Doctor (MD) programs numbered in the thousands per school.
My medical school, The George Washington University School of Medicine, (GWU), received over 7,000 applications for the 150 seats in each class. I was blessed to be one of the selected for full 4-year scholarship and received my first commission as a Navy Ensign in the summer of 1985 at NAV MED in Washington D.C.
Upon graduation, in 1989, I spent my first postdoctoral year at the Navy Medical Center in San Diego completing a “Transitional Internship.” The transitional internship required that I rotate through every major department in the hospital. Little did I know the Navy was preparing me for far more responsibility.
After the internship, in June of 1990, I was immediately assigned to the USS Cleveland LPD-7 and put in charge of the medical care of 1,000 sailors and marines as we prepared to deploy to the Persian Gulf in support of Operation Desert Storm. As you might expect, being housed onboard ship with a large contingent of sailors and marines for 6 months, then sailing halfway around the world into a war zone, was an experience like no other. Here are a few stories.
Once, we sailed up the west coast of India into a sea state of 5. Sea states tell the condition of the ocean surface at a given period of time; 0 being calm to 7 being very high waves. At a sea state of 5, the waves are about 12 feet high. The ride was so rough, everyone except those on watch were confined to quarters. Why? Because the ship rocked so much, it was easier at times to walk on the bulkhead (walls) than on the deck (floor).
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Once, again while travelling up the coast of India in the Arabian Sea, a large beast of some type swam up beneath our ship and just before coming to the surface submerged. This may not seem like much unless you understand that our ship, the USS Cleveland, was 532 feet long and over 30 feet from the water line to the deck. Whatever this thing was, it was almost as big as our ship!!!
Of course there are the medical emergencies that shaped my career. Once a young sailor came to sick bay complaining of difficulty breathing. After listening to his lungs, I realized he had diminished breath sounds on one side. I ordered a chest x-ray. His study revealed a collapsed lung. In the US, paramedics would have been called and the patient transported to the nearest emergency room. But onboard a large Navy ship in the middle of the congested Hong Kong harbor, I had to flag down the nearest fishing dingy and, through interpreters, explain the emergent need for immediate hospitalization to reinflate the lung. After much improvisation, the sailor made it to the hospital, received treatment, and was returned to full duty.
A month later, we were ported in Muskat, Oman. This same sailor went with shipmates on liberty to explore nearby mountains. There, again, his lung collapsed. Onboard ship we received a frantic radio call for help. But at that time, Muskat had no ambulance service. And this sailor was two hours away by car. So, I and one of my corpsmen piled our life-sustaining medical gear into a taxi and drove for what seemed like forever along narrow dirt roads, high into the mountains, searching for this sailor whose life was in danger.
I was concerned because often a chest tube has to be surgically placed in order to reinflate the lung. To perform this procedure outside in the dust and dirt is begging for infection and further injury. Not to mention the difficulty in maintaining the tube during the bumpy ride down the mountain in the back seat of a taxi! I knew, only if his oxygen level could be maintained high enough to sustain life a chest tube was the only alternative.
We finally found him sprawled on the dirt floor of an old, weatherbeaten, makeshift hotel, with holes cut in the walls for windows. He was barely hanging on to life. Upon our arrival, he said: “The only thing that kept me alive was that I knew you would come.”
I immediately put him on 100% oxygen with a full-face mask. Since I had a pulse oximeter, which is a device that measures the blood’s oxygen saturation, we were able to keep him above 90% O2 saturation without a chest tube. Immediately, he was able to breathe comfortably. We monitored him during the drive to the hospital where he underwent surgery, did well, and eventually returned to full duty.
The military is a great place for young people to discover themselves. I was given tremendous responsibility very early in my career. The military teaches the mental and physical discipline required to properly steward responsibility. Leadership and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. My military career increased my ability to shoulder increasing responsibility. Sir Issac Newton said it best, “If I have seen further, it is only because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.”
