Tag: Purdue Boilermakers

Tom Oliver now typically works seven days a week. As chief resident at Main Line Health just outside Philadelphia, the former Purdue player and internist is on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, directly taking care of patients, building out surgical schedules and developing educational series at a time when protocols and strategies are evolving at record pace.

“We’re changing what we do almost weekly,” he said, “which is unheard of.”

Heather Mathison majored in biology at Utah Valley State and switched gears from wanting to become to a doctor to nurse while a junior in college after her mother, Diana, ended up in the ICU fighting cancer.

“I really, really love being able to be with patients and families,” said Mathison, who now works as a nurse in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.

During summer breaks in college, Allen Heeger worked in the radiology department at the local hospital in Washington, Missouri. Heeger chose Webster, a Division III school, for undergrad so that he could play golf.

Now he’s doing a one-year fellowship in thoracic and cardiac imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Heeger, 32, said about 30 percent of his days now are spent reading the scans of COVID-19 patients, though he doesn’t consider himself to be one of the front-line individuals.

“I’m a little more protected in the reading room,” he said.

Oliver lives about 3 miles from Merion Golf Club but hasn’t played it. In July, he’ll begin a new job at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona. Growing up in Nottingham, England, Oliver partly fell in love with golf because no two days were the same. Different wind, different setup, different pins. He knew early on that being chained to an office desk wasn’t for him.

“That’s kind of the way medicine is,” said Oliver. “No day is the same. No one patient is pretty much the same.”

Oliver was a staple in Purdue’s lineup from 2006-09. He was a senior when Tyler Duncan, who won on the PGA Tour last year, was a freshman.

Purdue coach Devon Brouse spent a couple decades working alongside basketball great Dean Smith at North Carolina before moving to back to his native Indiana. Brouse said Smith often talked about how proud he was of former players who were out doing good in the world.

As far as Brouse can recall, after 42 years of coaching, Oliver might be the only medical doctor on his lengthy alumni list.

Brouse’s voice came through the phone full of pride and he chuckled as he recalled a time at a tournament in Alabama when Oliver got off to a shaky start, making triple-bogey on his second hole. They had a chat before Oliver reached a difficult par 3.

“Darn if he didn’t step on the tee box and hole out,” said Brouse. “He said ‘How’s that, coach, for getting it in gear?’ ”

Mathison, 26, said the time management skills she learned as a student-athlete carried over into an accelerated nursing program and now in her day-to-day job. There’s a team dynamic in healthcare, she said, and being sidelined from patient care with a back injury these past few weeks hasn’t been easy.

She’s done a lot of personal protective equipment, or PPE, training of late. Seattle was one of the hardest hit areas when the virus was first detected in the U.S., and Mathison said there was a lot of learning on the fly.

Next week she’ll be able to get back to tending to patients and expects to be sent directly into the COVID-19 ICU floor, where there’s a remembrance wall for patients who died of the virus.

With no visitors allowed and some personnel limited, there are times when the hospital seems like a strange place.

“It feels empty even though we have patients,” she said. “I feel there’s still so much that we don’t know about the virus.”

People want a quick fix for COVID-19, Oliver said, but there’s isn’t one. It’s serious. It’s aggressive. It’s unlike anything he’s seen.

“You can’t predict who gets sick,” he said. “You really can’t take it for granted.”