Navy saves teen whose appendix burst on cruise

msnbc.msn.com

SAN DIEGO - A teenager whose appendix ruptured at sea, hundreds of miles from help, got safely to shore Tuesday after an unusual rescue in which the Navy airlifted her from a cruise ship for emergency surgery. Laura Montero, 14, fell ill aboard the Dawn Princess cruise ship off the coast of Baja California. The Bahamian-registered ship sent out a distress call Friday that was answered by the USS Ronald Reagan, which was on training maneuvers about 500 miles away. The nuclear carrier was the closest ship with a hospital facility, according to a news release from the Navy. It steamed overnight toward the cruise ship, which was about 250 miles northwest of Cabo San Lucas when the call went out.

A helicopter took off from the Reagan around 5 a.m. Saturday to close the final 175-mile gap between the ships. The crew arrived after a 45-minute flight and lowered a medic onto the cruise ship deck in a basket because there wasn’t space to land, said Lt. Cmdr. Gregory Leland, the pilot. Montero, who was on an antibiotic drip, was loaded into a litter basket, lifted into the helicopter and flown back to the Reagan for an appendectomy. Her mother stayed aboard the cruise ship. “We practice this all the time, but this is the first time I’ve pulled a civilian off a cruise ship,” Leland said. A spokeswoman for Princess Cruises, which operates the Dawn Princess, said the ship’s captain called the Coast Guard for help because he felt that would be faster than diverting to the nearest Mexican port.