Leg lost, but not his will to be a firefighter

Leg lost, but not his will to be a firefighter

By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Saturday Dec 5, 2009 14:51:51 EST

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — Tech. Sgt. Mike Gambill has 19 years with the Air Force as a firefighter. He wants to make it 20.

Whether the Air Force lets Gambill mark two decades of service, though, depends on whether he can still do the job after losing his left leg in a motorcycle crash.

But the 40-year-old husband and father of three has a new artificial limb — so high-tech that it costs $60,000 and is one of only 60 like it in the country — and faith that the service he loves will let him support it the way it has supported him, first when he donated a kidney to his father and now through the loss of his leg.

Gambill said he thinks of the Air Force — particularly the firefighting community — as his second family, and he wants nothing more than to go back to duty, even if it’s as a firefighting instructor or supervisor.

“My goal is to go back somehow, some way as a firefighter,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll be able to stay with the Air Force and do it that way.”
A son’s act of love

Gambill has firefighting in his blood.

His father, Jerry Gambill, spent 21 years in the Navy as a P-3 and C-130 flight engineer, then racked up 23 years with the Bakersfield Fire Department. His uncle retired from the fire department, too.

Gambill worked for the city as a reservist firefighter before he joined the Air Force in 1991. In basic training, a personnelist handed out a form that asked the recruits what they wanted to do in the service.

“I listed firefighting, firefighting, firefighting, firefighting and gave it back,” Gambill said.

Two years ago, on leave from Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Gambill saved a life that had nothing to do with firefighting. He gave one of his kidneys to his dad, whose kidneys were destroyed by diabetes and high blood pressure.

Before his kidney transplant, the older Gambill was hooked up to a dialysis machine for 12 hours a week.

“Michael came home and he went to dialysis with me a couple of times, and he didn’t like it any more than I did,” said Jerry Gambill, 62. “So he stepped up to the plate and volunteered to donate a kidney. … I’m doing really good, thanks to him.”

Despite a painful two-month recovery and the reality that he now has only one kidney, Gambill said he doesn’t regret his decision.

“I would do it again tomorrow morning if they asked me to,” he said. “Never a second thought.”
Another life-changing moment

Almost six months ago, while serving a special assignment as an unaccompanied housing manager at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., Gambill learned he and his family would be moving to Kadena Air Base, Japan.

He didn’t want to take his beloved Harley-Davidson Road King overseas so he decided to drive it back to his parents’ house in Bakersfield. He left Colorado on June 26 and — after a brief stop at the casino tables in Las Vegas — rejoined his wife, Michele, in California on June 29. Michele Gambill and their three daughters had traveled to Bakersfield a few days earlier to get ready for the move.

About 10 p.m. that Monday night, on his way to his parents’ house, Gambill was hit by a GMC Yukon making an illegal U-turn. The force of the crash threw him about 60 feet, the bike 120 feet.

“I remember rolling and rolling and then I came to a stop,” Gambill recalled. “I wasn’t in a lot of pain.”

Gambill had broken ribs and a collapsed lung. His lower left leg was a piece of raw meat bristling with splintered bones. It’s quite possible he is alive today only because a doctor in a restaurant across the street ran out and put a tourniquet on his badly bleeding leg.

Michele Gambill arrived at the hospital about the same time as the ambulance. She sat in the waiting room, frantic for any news about her husband.

“It seemed like an eternity before I got to see him,” she said. “And then when I saw him … he was all bloodied up. … I could see the fear in his eyes. I could tell he was hurting and scared.”

Gambill talked briefly to his wife.

“I told her three things,” he said. “ ‘I love [you], goodbye, and call the base and get a hold of somebody.’ I thought I was getting ready to die.”

Then, everything went black.
The long road back

The doctors had induced a coma to help stabilize Gambill. He remained unconscious for seven days.

Almost immediately after learning doctors had to amputate his leg, Gambill said he focused his energy on recovery and rehabilitation.

“Forty-eight hours after waking up, I put myself in the right mindset and I haven’t veered off,” he said. “What’s really been driving me forward is my family.”

Michele Gambill admits she didn’t have the same confidence as her husband at first. She worried about his state of mind. She said she worried about how their children — Elizabeth, 13; Melissa, 11; and Hannah, 8 — would react to their father’s disability. She worried about herself.

“I didn’t know how life would be,” said Michele Gambill, who is attending school to become a medical assistant. “I didn’t know at that moment how I was going to handle having my husband missing a leg, how he was going to handle not having a leg and going through the entire recovery process.”

But the Gambills, buoyed by fellow airmen, friends and their extended family in Bakersfield, pulled together and cheered each other on.

By early August, Gambill left the hospital and returned with his wife and daughters to his parents’ home. Another two months passed before Gambill received his prosthetic leg, a Rheo microprocessor knee that reacts automatically to a user’s walking style. The high-tech limb, which cost $60,000, is better for active people but also harder to learn to use.

“Microprocessor knees are the most advanced technology we have in the field … right now,” said Trevor Townsend, Gambill’s prosthetist. “It’s state of the art.”

Just five months out of the hospital, Gambill can already walk on his prosthetic leg — the carbon-fiber thigh is decorated with his ABU blouse, rank and unit patch — without a cane.

Now, Gambill is setting his sights on jogging and fighting fires again.

“The inspirational thing about Mike is he’s not afraid of falling, and he gets right back up and keeps going,” said Dawn Thompson, his physical therapist. “I have other patients who fall and that stops them in their progress.”

Gambill is quick to point out that he, too, has his moments.

“Sometimes you get down … but those are the times you just say, ‘I can’t live in this pity mode,’ ” he said. “I’ll play with my daughters or the dog, and it brings me right back up.”
An uncertain future

A medical evaluation board of doctors will convene early next year to determine Gambill’s fate. The doctors must assess his prospects of once again being a productive airman.

The Air Force Personnel Center, which oversees the disability evaluation process, would not discuss Gambill but outlined the medical evaluation process.

“They review the member’s physical and/or mental condition to see if the medical condition could disqualify him … from continued military service,” AFPC said in a statement. “During the medical review, the MEB is looking for any medical or mental condition that may prevent the service member from deploying; performing the job for which he was assigned; or meeting minimum Air Force medical and/or fitness standards.”

The medical evaluation board will either return Gambill to duty or refer him to a physical evaluation board, which would decide whether he is fit for duty.

If Gambill is ruled unfit, he could appeal the decision to the Secretary of the Air Force Personnel Council.

Gambill won’t guess how the process will turn out, but he said he believes it’s his duty to remain an airman.

He said the Air Force supported him through the kidney operation and the loss of his leg, and he wants to show his appreciation.

“The military has been phenomenal to me,” Gambill said. “They’ve been very much of a supporter. I want to give it back.”

PHOTO: Tech. Sgt. Mike Gambill does rehabilitation exercises with physical therapist Dawn Thompson. Gambill lost his leg June 29 in a motorcycle accident and is ahead of schedule in his rehab.
http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/12/airforce_amputee_120509w/