Navy Trauma Training Center instructor cheats death, but not emotion

Photo By Sgt. Whitney N. Frasier | Cmdr. Green assesses a patient that jumped off a 40 foot library. He explained that the patient shattered both ankles and suffered severe head trauma before making it to the hospital. Cmdr. Green and other doctors from the unit discuss proper care procedures for each patient prior to taking on the shift.  

05.04.2009

Story by Sgt. Whitney N. Frasier 

1st Marine Logistics Group

A green mustang pulls up in the driveway, its license plate boasts that the driver is the "death cheater."

Cmdr. Donald J. Green steps out of the car and walks into his office. He's sporting blue scrubs and a cap with "Trojan Trauma" emblazoned in red across the front. The muscles corded around his arms say "street fighter," but his eyes tell a different tale.

Lights flipped on reveal a statue of the Death Dealer sitting on his desk, "to keep his enemy close," he says.

Later, he leaves his office to introduce himself to students at the Navy Trauma Training Center in Los Angeles. Less than five minutes into his lecture, two tears roll down the side of his face.

He opens most of his classes with the story of a Marine medically evacuated to Taqaddum Surgical who arrived with no vital signs. The surgeons performed an open heart massage to get the patient's heart beating again. The procedure was successful. The next step was to stop the bleeding in his abdomen. It was too late, they already lost him.

Green pulled the dog tags off the patient to identify the body. But there wasn't a name. No social security number either. To his profound grief, a hologram photo of a young woman and a baby stared back at him, stirring thoughts of a jarhead at the mall with his family, buying gimmicky dog tags during pre-deployment leave.

This incident still affects Green day to day. When a patient doesn't survive and Green has to tell the families of their loss or even when he has to speak to his students about death, sorrow and grief grips him.

"It never gets old," said Green. "It's just gets worse every time."

This isn't something one would expect from an amateur body builder. Cockiness isn't an ingredient of choice. However, he did make it known that he can always win first place ... sometimes 8th. At home, Green has a map of the United States with roughly a dozen X's in the middle of each state.

"These are all the places I have been in jail," said Green. "I'm just kidding, it's just all the places I have been."

Body building is just one of his hobbies, but his full time hobby is saving lives.

Being a doctor was his dream from younger years, when his grandfather wished all his grandchildren be doctors. He was raised in Glendive, Montana. No more then 7,000 people live in the small city, and not many more than that have ever heard of the town, said Green.

The price of medical school was too expensive and he knew there had to be an easier way to pay for it. The route he had chosen is an honor to America. He chose to be apart of the highest decorated corps the Navy has to offer and the Hospital Corps soon became a major part of his life.

Dr. Green began his residency in 1996 at the University of Arizona. He owed a lot of his success to the United States Navy, and didn't hesitate to dedicate himself to duty. He deployed soon after he graduated in 2001 as part of a surgical fleet on the USS Bonhomme Richard. When he arrived back from his second tour in 2003, he married his fiancee, Cindy.

Besides spending time with his wife and three children, he enjoys nothing more then saving the lives of good people. He soon found himself deployed again. Operation Phantom Fury called for his expertise. In just 10 days, his team had treated 200 patients.

"It's the coolest thing I will ever do," said Green.

Now still on active duty in the U.S. Navy, he works in the middle of the Los Angeles County violence at the University of Southern California medical center as a trauma surgeon. His job here keeps him from being deployed, but the trauma that comes through the double doors is similar to that seen in combat.

Green is the chief of Trauma C, one of three sections of trauma at the hospital. Since he is employed under the Navy, he provides the hospital and its patients with a good amount of free trauma care every year. He is well-liked and respected by doctors and professors around the world.

"He is an excellent surgeon," said Peep Talving, M.D., Ph.D., chief of Trauma B and a visiting professor from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. "He has a vast amount of expedience from his deployments and provides us with resources, such as the cadaver lab, he's a major asset." said Talving, 43, Sweden.

In addition to his job at the center, his primary job is to instruct an average of 220 student corpsmen every year before they deploy. He is the director of this relatively new program that began in 2002. The intent of the course is to give the corpsmen experience in trauma and the ability to treat it prior to deploying with Marines.

Combat injuries are not always preventable, but it doesn't mean most injuries aren't survivable. He wants the rotators to see bleeding, to understand it's real and that it is going to happen. The inevitability of trauma and the importance of a quick, confident and knowledgeable response is the message he tries to send out to his students before they graduate the three-week course.

"His teaching methods are not only motivational, but it is really inspiring to work with someone of his essence," said Petty Officer 3rd Class Sean Morgan, corpsmen and student at NTTC.

Small techniques, such as starting an intravenous, become ancient to a doctor because they haven't done it in years. Green strives to better his corpsmen every time they meet.

"[Corpsmen] are my colleagues," said Green. "They need to know how to do the simple things because I don't."

For Green, cheating death is simply another chapter of his life, a chapter that he does not plan on leaving for years to come.

"It took me one day on the job before I knew," said Green. "I want to do this forever."

• Date Taken: 05.04.2009
• Date Posted: 05.04.2009 16:51
• Story ID: 33190