Tennessee Doctor Battles COVID-19 While Facing Cancer
By DEVARRICK TURNER, Knoxville News Sentinel
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) During the peak COVID-19 surges of 2020, patients sat in the lobby of Fort Loudoun Medical Center in Lenoir City with IVs pumping fluids and nutrients into their veins.
Nurses checked blood pressure and other vital signs. Doctors evaluated patients with sprained ankles or nausea, and ordered medicines to alleviate pain or CAT scans to better understand their patients ailments.
The hospitals hallways were lined with beds filled with patients experiencing fever, heart issues, or abdominal pain while hospital staff re-gloved, re-gowned, and re-masked, adjusting to the ever changing protocols and performing tasks outside their job description.
This place was just a battle zone, said Dr. Erik Geibig, the emergency department director at Fort Loudoun Medical Center. I mean, you just had patients strung out all the way through.
While Geibig, 51, was leading his team through an unprecedented global pandemic, he was also fighting a more personal battle.
On Thanksgiving weekend 2020, he was told he had stage four prostate cancer.
He began receiving aggressive chemotherapy treatments, but the prognosis was not a positive one.
Through it all, Geibig worked his regular hospital shifts and treated patients despite his own compromised immune system. He attended his daughters soccer games and traveled to watch his son play hockey in North Carolina. He remained a source of inspiration and drive for his Fort Loudoun staff.
He stepped up for his hospital, community, and family amid a bleak personal health crisis with honor and valor, said Travis Estes, Loudon County EMS director.
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