Frisco – The climbing guide called on a satellite phone from halfway around the world.
A woman on a trip in a remote area of China broke her thigh bone as the guide described what had happened. Dr. Tom Hackett, of the Steadman Hawkins Clinic in Summit County, talked them through the situation from his home. He told them how to stabilize the injury and fought with Chinese doctors in the area to make sure they didn’t touch her while he organized a plane to Hong Kong for surgery.
She had to get out of there, Hackett said.
“The stuff they were going to do was back from the Ming Dynasty. … It became like a diplomatic issue,” he said.
Hackett is the medical director for the American Mountain Guide Association and a world-renowned orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine doctor, who if left in the middle of the desert has the skills to survive.
In fact, he has taught military personnel survival techniques, has worked as a climbing guide, rescued people from deadly circumstances and now operates on famous athletes.
Hackett started out working in archaeology. He put together displays at museums and made tools. At the same time, he taught desert survival and led climbs in Southern Utah and Wyoming. The more he became involved in climbing around the world – in Bolivia, Peru, Nepal, Europe and Saudi Arabia – the more interested in emergency medicine he became. So, Hackett became a wilderness EMT and did search and rescue in Wyoming and Utah.
“Doing more search and rescue, I got interested more in medicine,” said Hackett, who would get patients out, stabilized and to a helicopter or emergency room.
“I felt like I was starting something and not finishing it,” he said.
It was that feeling that led him back to college. And despite a pre-med adviser at the University of Wyoming telling him he would fail, he made it through, paying his way by working as a carpenter.
From there, he went on to Tufts University in Massachusetts, became involved in orthopedics and worked with college hockey teams until moving to Los Angeles for additional training in sports surgery.
Once he received his medical degree, Hackett went to western Nepal to practice – a truly rewarding experience, he said.
One woman in particular he will never forget lived a day-and-a-half walk from the clinic. She came to him for a minor procedure. Afterward, she was so thankful she made the trip a second time to bring a present.
“She walked three full days just to give me a cucumber,” Hackett said.
Hackett has been with the Steadman Hawkins Clinic in Summit County for about three years. He does emergency work at St. Anthony Summit Medical Center and specializes in shoulders, elbows and knees. He travels with the Colorado Rockies and U.S. Snowboard Team and is a consultant for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Recently, a snowboarder flew in from Austria for surgery with Hackett at the clinic in Frisco.
In addition to treatment, Hackett is doing biomechanical research to learn how to prevent and better repair shoulder injuries. The research, through the Steadman Hawkins Research Foundation, focuses on the biological side of injuries, looking at how to create an environment where the injury can heal faster, better and stronger, Hackett said.
