{"id":677,"date":"2014-09-25T21:10:27","date_gmt":"2014-09-26T02:10:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nicholls.edu\/magazine\/?p=677"},"modified":"2014-09-25T21:10:27","modified_gmt":"2014-09-26T02:10:27","slug":"joel-comeaux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nicholls.edu\/magazine\/2014\/09\/25\/joel-comeaux\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking an emergency case out of my field"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Joel<\/a>Dr. Joel Comeaux (DIP \u201956)<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

49 years in practice | Obstetrics and Gynecology | Houma OB-GYN Clinic
\n<\/strong><\/em>
\n“Without Nicholls, I would not have had the means to even go to college. From my Holy Savior High School class in Lockport, six of us went to Nicholls and became a physician, dentist, pharmacist, school principal, school superintendent and an astrophysicist. None of us could have afforded to go elsewhere.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

While I was a medical intern and resident,\u00a0I moonlighted in emergency rooms and various hospital departments and made house calls to earn extra money to support my wife and three kids. One winter night, I was working in the emergency room at a charity hospital in Lake Charles. I was the only doctor there, even though I was the chief resident in OB-GYN, not emergency.<\/p>\n

They brought in a guy on a stretcher. The two people with him \u2014 his wife and child \u2014 were dead on arrival. He was still alive but unconscious with a maraschino-cherry red complexion \u2014 common signs of carbon monoxide poisoning. By myself in the middle of the night, I started racking my brain on what I could do to save this person. This was before there were hyperbaric (pressurized) oxygen chambers, which today\u00a0can easily replace the carbon monoxide in your blood with oxygen.<\/p>\n

I was familiar with an OB-GYN\u00a0procedure called exchange transfusion, which we used for babies born with Rh incompatibility (when the mother is\u00a0A- while the baby is A+). To save the baby\u2019s life, we drew out some of the baby\u2019s blood and replaced it with fresh blood and continued that cycle until the baby stabilized. I decided I was going\u00a0to try applying that procedure to this adult man. I had never heard of it done before for carbon monoxide poisoning, but the man was going to die if I didn\u2019t\u00a0try something. So I drew off a pint of his blood and gave him a pint of blood and continued doing that. Finally, his\u00a0color started returning to normal, and he recovered. It was a radical procedure, but it saved a guy\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

Since then, I\u2019ve personally delivered more than 7,000 babies, but this remains my proudest case.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u2014 Written by\u00a0Stephanie Verdin, publications coordinator<\/em><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in the fall 2013 issue of Voila! magazine. Click\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to read the entire issue.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Joel Comeaux (DIP \u201956) 49 years in practice | Obstetrics and Gynecology | Houma OB-GYN Clinic “Without Nicholls, I would not have had the means to even go to college. From my Holy Savior High School class in Lockport, six of us went to Nicholls and became a physician, dentist, pharmacist, school principal, school […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nTaking an emergency case out of my field - The Colonel<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nicholls.edu\/magazine\/2014\/09\/25\/joel-comeaux\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Taking an emergency case out of my field - The Colonel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dr. Joel Comeaux (DIP \u201956) 49 years in practice | Obstetrics and Gynecology | Houma OB-GYN Clinic “Without Nicholls, I would not have had the means to even go to college. 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