Visitor Grateful for Care After Medical Emergency Off Molokini

Jack and Terri Hunter. PC: Maui Memorial Medical Center Foundation.

Last January, Texas residents Jack and Terri Hunter were on their annual trip to Maui and had just jumped in the water at Molokini Crater for a scuba dive, when Jack noticed Terri was unresponsive and floating face down in the water.

After returning to the boat harbor and being taken to Maui Memorial Medical Center by ambulance, MMMC physician Dr. Michael Shea immediately ordered a CT scan.  The scan unveiled that Terri had suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm.

According to the Maui Memorial Medical Center Foundation, Dr. Turgut Berkman then performed an endovascular coil embolization in which he inserted a platinum coil up through Terri’s femoral artery into her brain aneurysm, preventing more blood from entering the aneurysm and allowing it to create a clot.

Terri was in MMMC’s ICU for 14 days and remained in the hospital for one more week after that. “The care Terri received was exceptional – all the doctors and nurses were very professional and attentive,” said Jack. “Every year we travel throughout the US and abroad, but people always ask us why we continue to come to Maui every year, and it is because Maui is in the US, with US health care and all the other things the US has to offer, and we were right. We don’t think Terri would be here today if we had been traveling somewhere else.”

“I am generally in good health – this is something that could happen to anyone,” said Terri. “We have a number of friends in Texas who are physicians and they were all amazed that a small island such as Maui had a neuro interventional radiologist on staff.”

Today Terri is fully recovered and back to her active lifestyle. “People on Maui need to know and feel comfortable with the medical care they are receiving at MMMC,” said Terri. “Today I believe in miracles and a large part of that is due to Maui Memorial Medical Center,” she said.

*PC/Info courtesy Maui Memorial Medical Center Foundation.