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

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!