A member of Delaware’s Air National Guard offered a unique thank you Friday at Christiana Hospital.
Lt. Col. Barry Orbinati gave a military coin to Physician’s Assistant Ed Knox for recognizing last November that he had an aneurysm and getting him to surgery in time to fix it before it ruptured. The ceremony, called coining, allows military personnel to honor a civilian for an outstanding act.
Knox was on duty November 13th at Christiana Care’s Middletown ER when Orbinati came in suffering from what was believed to be severe migraines.
"Ed started asking me tons of questions I’d never heard before. And started diagnosing the problem rather than the symptoms," said Orbinati.
"He actually told me, something’s different about this headache, it’s going into my neck. And that just sort of set up the warning bells," said Knox.
Knox suggested a CAT scan and doctors discovered a seven millimeter aneurysm in the Lt. Colonel’s brain. He was rushed to Christiana Hospital and had surgery to repair the problem.
Knox says he was just doing his job, but Orbinati believes without Knox’s help, he likely would have died that night.