PHOTO ESSAY: The irony of one man’s journey from hospital dreamer to patient in recovery

In a comfortable, clean, cool, and well-attended room at Guam Regional Medical City at the time this article publishes, my friend Peter Sgro, Jr. is recovering from spinal surgery performed by a board-certified neurosurgeon. Pete spent the last week prior to the surgery recovering from an infection that left him in excruciating pain. The medics loaded him onto an ambulance from his upper Tumon home, and within 12 minutes he was on an emergency room bed surrounded by a team of attentive medical professionals. I was actually on the phone with him while the medics were about to carry him out of the ambulance.

The infection was unrelated to the work he needed done on his spine. And his spinal surgery wasn’t actually scheduled until next month. Things just worked out this way.

The point is that it happened at all… on Guam.

And there’s an irony to all this.

In 2006, the attorney and president of the International Group, Inc., sat at a table and began scribbling notes on a napkin about medical care on Guam. Among the notes: ‘Better hospital. Why not?!’

So, he started researching, then talking with people in his vast network of industry friends from abroad. And in no time, Pete had a vision: build a new private hospital somewhere on Guam.

People thought he was crazy. ‘Pipe dream,’ some of the so-called pros of industry and politics said in the early days of the development of a strategic plan. ‘How will a private hospital make money, if Guam Memorial Hospital can’t even operate in the black?’

But, then, more people started to see the vision. Nurses like the late Dr. Margaret Hattori Uchima, doctors, ancillary services professionals, and even GMH workers joined the movement of what would be known as the Guam Healthcare and Hospital Development Foundation. Then came the businessmen and the bankers. Something was there. They all saw it.

Among the believers, movers, and shakers were current Public Auditor Benjamin Cruz, and Healthcare Services of the Pacific CEO Ruth Gurusamy, who visited Pete at his suite at GRMC this past week.

According to Pete, it was our friend Ruth who pointed out the irony.

“She said to me, ‘Peter do you see the irony here?’ And I said, ‘No, what is it?’ And Ruth said, ‘All those years ago you started up the whole effort to get this hospital built because you felt people shouldn’t have to go off island any more for care and surgeries like these, and here you are all these years later. You’re getting spinal surgery right here on Guam, when it wasn’t too long ago you had to go off island for this kind of thing.'”

My friend had tears in his eyes as he was talking about this. And gratitude. So much gratitude.

When he woke up Ash Wednesday morning, one of the social workers making her rounds asked if he was Catholic. “The priest will be saying Mass in the chapel, and we’ll have it streamed onto the TV in your room, Mr. Sgro.” Pete was anointed with ashes that afternoon.

They even went around asking patients if they preferred seafood that day and on Fridays.

The chapel inside GRMC, where that Mass was held is dedicated to the memory of Peter and Agnes Sgro; a fitting commemoration considering the contributions Pete made to the development of GRMC.

Pete never benefited from all those volunteer years that led to the building and operation of Micronesia’s premier hospital. But, today, in a much more meaningful way, he and his family and friends truly are benefitting from his visionary and pioneering work. He’s resting in a sanitized room filled with sunlight and equipped with modern technology… receiving care from the region’s best medical professionals… preparing for physical therapy from a surgery he didn’t have to get in the Philippines, Hawaii, or Los Angeles. All because he built what we needed here.