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Leap of faith

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From dizzying heights upwards of 1,500 feet, Dennis Anthony Martinez remembers how the cold, piercing winds whipped at his face as he sliced through the mist of ethereal cloud cover, plummeting to the terra firma below.
Then, the sudden burst and flowing silk from the release of the parachute, followed by a brief glide and gentle landing.
Just another day of duty for the then-teenage paratrooper in the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.
And with every skydive, not only did he come closer to the earth’s surface, Sgt. Dennis A. Martinez also came closer to becoming Dr. Dennis A. Martinez.
Taking the phrase “jumping through hoops” to a new level, Martinez earned his college education through the Army. Over his four years in the service, Martinez made a total of 52 jumps for the extra $50 a month in his pay grade while stationed at Ft. Bragg. He would sock away the bonus, along with the Army’s additional savings incentives for college.
It would be the first in a long list of sacrifices.
“They say that a career in medicine is the ultimate delayed satisfaction,” said Martinez, 49, today an accomplished emergency medicine physician and the medical director of the Emergency Department at Bakersfield Heart Hospital. “And they’re right.”

A better life
Martinez is a third-generation Mexican-American, and like many descendants of those who endured true hardships to build a better life for their families, he is mindful of the great sacrifices that came long before his own.
His grandparents and parents — all migrant farmworkers — followed the harvests, picked the crops and made one thing clear by the time Martinez and his four siblings came along: Get an education.
In case he didn’t quite subscribe to his elders’ advice, Martinez’s parents, Antonio and Caroline, sent him into the local Kern County fields two sweltering summers in a row to work.
“I picked a lot of tomatoes those summers,” said Martinez. “And the whole time, I knew picking tomatoes wasn’t what I wanted for my life.”
So Martinez put his head down, did his best during his days at South High School, then looked toward his future.
Despite his desires to start college immediately upon graduating from South in 1978, Martinez and his family couldn’t afford to fulfill his dreams of entering the medical field quite yet.
That’s where the Army stepped in.
Within a decade of completing his military service — though, to this day, he remains in the Army Reserves as a Lt. Colonel and even returned to active duty as part of a medical unit sent to Iraq in 2007 — Martinez had married and was the father of five small children (today, they range in ages from 17 to 28).
Besides working full time at Pep Boys, Martinez picked up extra hours as a lab tech — drawing blood — for Mercy Hospital, all the while attending Bakersfield College as a pre-med student.
After two years, he was able to transfer to Cal State Bakersfield, earning a degree in chemistry in 1986. Additional military financial aid and a patchwork of various scholarships paid (just barely) for his medical schooling at UC Davis.
At last, the fresh-faced paratrooper turned college student was on his way.

Sleep? What sleep?
Juggling life as a student, husband and father, plus working two jobs proved hectic enough for Martinez.
Then came med school.
At times, day-to-day tasks blurred into each other as a sleep-deprived Martinez attended classes, returned home for a short nap (admitting this sometimes happened on the sideline of an AYSO soccer game), put the kids to bed, then hit the books again for an all-night study session.
“I drank a lot of Jolt cola back then,” he said. “As a doctor now, I can’t recommend that to anyone.”
The amount of study suggested for medical students was “one hour, per one hour of lecture,” according to Martinez.
“So basically, you had to study all the time,” he said. “I missed out on a lot.”
It was also a bit defeating that, while Martinez started his college years later than most, then on to seven more years of medical training, everyone around him seemed to be so much further in life.
“I had a lot of friends who were buying their first homes, already established with a career and a ‘normal’ schedule — and there I was still in school,” Martinez said.
So as the attending physician from 1993 to 1996 at Kern Medical Center, whenever the residents expressed their frustration over a lack of sleep and having to “do it all,” he understood.
Really understood.
“I had been there, I knew what they were going through,” said Martinez, from BHH’s emergency room, dressed in dark, ocean blue scrubs, his hospital ID tag appropriately secured with a heart-shaped pin. “But I also knew of the rewards they would experience, too.”
Even as an instructor, Martinez continued to better himself as a doctor, saying to teach is also to learn.
“You had to know what they needed to know, plus the answers to anything else they asked,” he said of his KMC students. “If I didn’t know the answers, I had to look them up and read the latest information — I was teaching, but I was also learning. Medicine is always about learning.”
But once Martinez was called back to military duty in Iraq from February to July 2007, it was as if he’d entered a whole new school of life.

‘Incredible intensity’
As a reserve in the U.S. Army Medical Corp, as soon as the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred, Martinez knew he’d eventually don cammies again — though this time, as a doctor in Iraq.
While there, Martinez developed a completely different definition of “hot weather.”
“I figured, ‘I’m from Bakersfield, the heat shouldn’t be a big deal,’” he said.
When he first arrived to the full-service hospitals — the first, a semi-permanent structure at Al Asad; the second, a temporary structure at Balad Airbase — that would be his “office” for the next five months, it was quite chilly.
By March, the rains came, creating a soggy terrain of “plastic mud,” Martinez said.
The summer season started in April, and come June, it was 105 degrees by 5 a.m. Daytime highs could reach a scorching 137! When outdoors, it was so hot that Martinez and his fellow soldiers holstered their military-issued pistols inside their flak jackets to shield them from the unrelenting sun.
“Otherwise, you wouldn’t be able to hold your weapon if you needed to use it,” said Martinez, adding he was fortunate  to perform his duties inside air-conditioned facilities.
When a member of the U.S. military, the Iraqi Army or even an enemy prisoner of war arrived for treatment, a whole team of top doctors put their specialized trauma training into action, Martinez said.
“The level of quality trauma care is driven by our wars,” he said. “The survival rate has grown exponentially with time, but so has the intensity of the injuries — incredible intensity, mostly from IEDs (improvised explosive devices). There were some very tough things to see.”
While in Iraq, some of Martinez’s most difficult moments came when he’d give a patient a satellite phone to call home and let family members know he/she had been injured.
“The sound of the screams and the desperate pleas from their parents to come home ...  it was hard to hear that,” said Martinez, his voice breaking with emotion, his eyes welling up at the memory. “They were relieved to hear their child’s voice, but very scared at the same time.”
Although he didn’t know it then, Martinez would soon experience the other side of a satellite phone call from a far-off land.
In March 2008, Martinez’s son, Peter, a U.S. Marine serving in artillery support in Afghanistan was injured in a rocket attack.
Peter, now 23, was only in his second month of duty when the vehicle he was in came under fire. He sustained a concussion, but fully recovered.
Still, the initial information from military officials could only tell the Martinez that his son had a “head injury,” and they would update his condition as soon as possible.
“That’s when my medical knowledge did not serve me well,” Martinez said. “I knew too much, I knew that a head injury could be anything — and, that it could be very bad.”
So when Peter was able to make his satellite call to his dad, the same mixture of emotions — relief, fear and gratitude — that his patients’ parents likely experienced washed over Martinez.
“I just asked him, ‘Mi’jo, is there anything I can do for you?’” he said. “And that’s when he asked for the bulldog.”
Unable to deny the request, Martinez soon purchased an English bulldog puppy — the canine mascot of the Marines — from a BHH co-worker. The wrinkly, pug-nosed pooch, Chesty Puller — named after a legendary U.S. Marine hero — joined the family’s other two dogs, Blanca and Bandit.
Peter is expected to return to duty in Afghanistan in the spring of 2010.

Heart of the matter
In July, the salt-and-pepper- haired ER doctor — think: a Latino George Clooney — came on board at BHH, which is celebrating its 10th year as well as a top 5 percent national ranking in coronary interventional procedures, the only hospital in Kern County to do so.
His presence has already made a positive impact, both for BHH patients and staff, according to Amber Kelley, RN and ER director.
“Dr. Martinez is an excellent ER physician ... very knowledgeable, calm and organized,” Kelley said. “It helps that he’s been in this community for such a long time and his military training makes him ready for anything — I don’t think there’s any situation that could come through here that Dr. Martinez hasn’t handled before.”
Of course, Martinez’s accomplished golf skills are an added bonus: A team from BHH just competed in the recent Dolores Huerta Golf Tournament, and with Martinez’s help, scored a respectable — though not quite winning — 10 under par.
BHH’s emergency room is available 24/7 for the care of any injury or illness. However, cardiac issues are common reasons for an ER visit.
If a heart attack is suspected, aggressive treatment begins immediately in BHH’s emergency department, making a real difference in patient outcome, Martinez said.
“When that muscle is failing — and the heart is a muscle — it’s dying, and it doesn’t recover once damaged ... We’re here to save that muscle and the patient,” said Martinez, who added BHH’s cardiac response time for diagnosis to treatment is 45 minutes, half the time set by the American Heart Association’s guidelines.
This is just one tangible benefit resulting from the attitude adjustment in emergency medical care that began in the late 1970s, according to Martinez.
What was once viewed by most physicians as a place to pay some dues and get paid for extra duty, now plays a critical role in quality patient care, he said. Martinez elected to specialize in emergency medicine. In 1996, he taught the subject as an assistant professor at UCLA.
Following in his medical footsteps is Martinez’s 21-year-old daughter, Leslie, who is on her way to becoming a registered nurse. Dad is a role model for her career — and life in general.

“My dad has really influenced me ... he came from nothing and became such a great doctor, a great person and provider for his family,” said Leslie, who is in her last quarter at Cal State Bakersfield and will start nursing school at BC. “As I got older and matured, I understood more why he was always pushing, and I knew I wanted to go into the medical field, too.”
But don’t expect Leslie to follow in her dad’s skydiving footsteps. That’s his deal, not hers.
“My dad is the risk taker — he’s like a big kid, and I’m glad it makes him happy to do what he likes, but no, I wouldn’t jump out of an airplane,” she said.
So what about the ER doc himself — will he ever strap on a chute again and take another leap of faith any time soon?
“No, I get enough adrenaline rush in the ER,” Martinez said with a smile.

Getting to know
Dr. Martinez
• Born Feb. 11, 1960
• Married to Lana Martinez
• Father of five: Lanie, 28; Peter, 23; Leslie, 21; Jenna, 19; and Halee, 17.
• Medical director at Bakersfield Heart Hospital’s Emergency Department
• Medical director for Hall Ambulance
• Medical director for the Bakersfield College Paramedic Program
• Member of the California Latino Medical Association
• Team doctor at Mira Monte High School
• Golf handicap of 4; member of Seven Oaks Country Club
• Die-hard ‘49er fan
• Avid cyclist
• Black belt in Tae Kwon Do