On the other hand...

[fpb]

From today's Yahoo News:

One-limbed med student to graduate UCLA Sun May 27, 6:49 PM ET



LOS ANGELES - A woman who lost both legs and an arm as a child is poised to become a doctor for children.

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Kellie Lim, who became a triple amputee at age 8 because of bacterial meningitis, is to graduate from UCLA's medical school on Friday, and she plans to focus on childhood allergies and infectious disease.

The Michigan native, 26, does not use a prosthetic arm and manages to perform most medical procedures — including giving injections and taking blood — with one arm. She walks on a pair of prosthetic legs.

"Just having that experience of being someone so sick and how devastating that can be — not just for me but for my family too — gives me a perspective that other people don't necessarily have," Lim said.

Raised by a blind mother in suburban Detroit, Lim went through years of wheelchairs and painful therapy after toxic shock from the meningitis claimed her limbs and three fingertips on her remaining hand.

Lim recently saw her childhood medical file, and learned that doctors had given her an 85 percent chance of dying of the meningitis. Just five months after the amputations, Lim returned to a normal school. Born right-handed, she learned to write and work with her left.

"I hate failing," she said. "It's one of those things that's so ingrained in me."

Lim's teachers and fellow students said she exudes a calm that makes them and her patients forget her physical circumstances.

"She has an aura of competence about her that you don't worry," said Dr. Elijah Wasson, one of Lim's supervisors. "At first you notice her hand is not there. But after about five minutes, she is so comfortable and so competent that you take her at face value."

Lim will begin a residency program at the UCLA Medical Center.

Comments

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just one arm, and only two fingers on that hand?

As hard as I'm sure this woman worked, and as amazing as this accomplishment is, I actually worry a bit both for her, and her patients. The United States is more and more the land of political correctness, often erring that way to stupid extremes. Can this woman perform all necessary procedures with just (I'm assuming) her index finger and thumb? It seems like, at the very least, she'd need an assistant or two with her to be her "other hand", as it were.

Basically, what I worry about is whether this woman was passed through the system, even though she *physically* cannot do the job, because of her handicap. If she was perhaps given too much slack, and the result is that we've now got a pediatrician who can *barely* perform the necessary tasks out there.

Her story is, of course, an inspirational one of overcoming adversity. Not trying to diminish that. But at the same time, we do have to take an objective view of this. She's a doctor. I really do hope that she uses several assistants.

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

Not a doctor myself, just someone who listens to her sister's (and her sister's friends) complain.
There are lots of people around who assist doctors for a living, and the doctors spend very little time with their patients, taking care of them. Doctors don't draw blood - they have lab techs and nurses and PAs for that. They don't cure people - nurses do most of that. As an allergy/infection specialist she won't be doing any heavy lifting - mostly just figuring out what is making people sick from talking and observing. The only place she might have been given "too much slack" is the bedside manner test. That's where the perception of a proto-doctor's sympathy is evaluated for the license. (My sister had to go to a special class after she failed that to learn how to 'act sympathetic'. We in the family laughed - we think that test is ridiculous. She should have failed it after the class. too. But she's a pathologist, so maybe she got a pity grade.)
Don't worry a bit about her - if she couldn't do the work she wouldn't get malpractice insurance. That's the "rubber meets the road" test/difference between polical correctness and pure performance.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Beethoven was deaf.

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

Ok... and? This is a qualitatively different kind of situation here. He could still *see* the notes written, and remember/imagine what they would sound like, even though he couldn't hear.

But if you've only got one hand (with only two working fingers) then you've only got one hand.

However, Rfachir's reply was a bit more helpful. And I'd forgotten that Pediatricians are basically just general practitioners, but for kids, so like said mostly what they do is diagnose and prescribe medication. Nurses and Physician Assistants could do all the physical work.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you can imagine a worse disability for a maker of music (and Beethoven as a young man made his living as a performer, not as a composer) and one likelier to put him off his work, I cannot. And Beethoven did not just ignore his disability: he overcame it in the most astonishing fashion. In the last years of his life, the quarter that was performing one of his late quartets felt that a particular passage was hurt by a ritardando (slow down) instruction. They were supposed to play it in the presence of Beethoven himself, and it was a huge work, more than forty minutes long. The quartet leader said "let's just play it without the rallentando and see what he says". Beethoven sat in a corner, his eyes fixed on the hands and bows of the four players. He did not say a word. When the rehearsal was over, he got up, said simply: "Let it remain so", walked over, and crossed out the rallentando instruction in all the four parts. I tell you that not many musicians with both ears working could have done something like that without a score.

What really annoyed me is that you suggested that this girl was given extra breaks out of Political Correctness. PC may perhaps promote people above their abilities in hard-to-test and easily bluffed subjects such as most of the humanities, but medicine is another matter. It is a demanding, difficult and frighteningly expensive and time-consuming discipline to study, and nobody gets to the end of the course unless they mean it. No amount of extra points for PCness could get her through the years of training. Besides, you imagine that disabled people are given advantages. I do not know what it is like in the United States, but let me tell you, sir, over here that is certainly not the case. The unemployment rate among disabled people who are able and willing to work is several times the national average, and, as a rule, a disabled person who really wants to get ahead had to either set up on their own or work ten times as hard as the next guy for less pay. I have disabled relatives and friends and believe me, I know something about it.

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

"I do not know what it is like in the United States,"

There you go. You should have stopped right there. Since I *do* know what it is like in the United States, and since the girl graduated from medical school in the *United States*. Not in Italy.

If that really annoys you, too bad. It's only the truth. Modern US culture is rotting from the disease of political correctness. I have seen it first hand, not from across the Atlantic.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

DO YOU HAVE ANY REASON WHATSOEVER, APART FROM YOUR OWN PARANOIA, TO BELIEVE THAT THIS IS THE CASE WHERE SHE IS CONCERNED? AND DO YOU HAVE ANY REASON TO BELIEVE THAT SOMEONE CAN JUST GET CARRIED OVER SIX YEARS OF THE TOUGHEST OF ALL ACADEMIC COURSES? IF NOT, KINDLY PIPE DOWN. I FIND YOUR TONE ARROGANT AND YOUR ASSUMPTIONS UNWARRANTED. YOU ARE JUST SAYING: "THAT'S THE WAY IT IS AND THAT IS ALL THERE IS TO IT." THAT PROVES PRECISELY NOTHING EXCEPT THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW TO MAKE YOUR POINTS.

I now declare this thread closed. I do not intend to waste any further anger on it.

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

I am guessing she won't be going into surgery. Not all medical specialties require that much hands-on work. I am sure she has learned to examine patients with her one hand, and she can perform simple procedures like giving injections. If she needs to do anything more complex, she is bound to have a nurse, or an intern, or some other sort of assistant around. Most doctors don't work alone, anyway.

Oh an by the way, it says she's just missing the fingertips on that hand, not the fingers.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

For the information of anyone concerned, privatemaladict is a medical student herself and knows a thing or two about it.

[theswordmaiden.livejournal.com]

Wow. I guess life does go on after extreme illness and injuries.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

For those who want it to. This sort of story always puts me in mind of Churchill's Dunkirk speech (...we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle...). If you ever see me in tears, it is because of courage like this. As a great poet (Sappho of Lesbos) once put it, what is beautiful is only beautiful for a moment, but what is noble is beautiful for ever.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That's a wonderful, wonderful story. I notice that her mother was blind--probably set an example of striving against odds and not succumbing to despair.

Only an opinion

[un-crayon-rouge.livejournal.com]

I had kind of a contradictory reaction to this. On one hand I thought "wow, that's simply great", on the other hand it made me uneasy that this story (and stories similar to it) put so much emphasis on success, getting there, not giving up. Of course, it's wonderful and a great example when you have that kind of strength, but not all people have that. If all we hear are stories like this, we run the risk of forgetting all the other ones, the ones who do give in, succumb to misery and depression and have sucky lives because of their illnesses and injuries. They deserve our respect too. Just because you don't achieve a miracle doesn't mean you're a less deserving human being.

I don't know, maybe it's that sentence "I hate failing" that jarred me. I fail often. It's part of life, we should accept it, learn it, move on.

Re: Only an opinion

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Well, no, I don't think that people who give up "deserve our respect". Perhaps you have confused respect with sympathy. One can sympathize with a person who has suffered and been unable to recover, but respect is exactly the wrong reaction. And, by the way, since I am marginally involved with the disabled movement, I have known too many strong and brave disabled people making positive use of their lives in spite of their disabilities (in fact, kikei, on whose behalf I just posted, suffers from some minor but debilitating conditions) to find people who fail to do so worthy of "respect". Sorry; affection, yes; sympathy, yes; understanding, yes; support - to help them try again - yes; respect, absolutely not. And I think we should promote role models of people who, whatever they do, put back into the world more than they have received.

One person who had that attitude in full was a female politician in the seventies, I think a mayor of Ottawa, Canada, who made the memorable remark: "In order for a woman to be regarded as half as good as a man, she has to do twice as well as one. Fortunately, that is not at all difficult." That's my girl!