Victors Valiant: turnberryknkn

turnberryknkn

Victors Valiant

May 02, 2006 04:49

Another story, about a fighter and a champion in a short white coat

We like to think we have a pretty good fight song here at U. Michigan. John Philip Sousa knew a thing or two about bands, and he thought it was, quote, "the greatest college fight song ever written". A literal hundred thousand people roaring the chorus in unison, fists thrust high with each line -- nothing captures better the spirit of college football -- or of U. Michigan -- than that spine-tingling sight, everything I wrote about once in The Yellow and Blue. Me, I grew up with the fight song, learned to sing the major verses right along with the Pledge of Allegiance, been a loyal son of the Wolverines as long and as fiercely as my friend hoya99 has faithfully followed his beloved Boston Red Sox. And no matter one's sports allegiance, one has to admit there's something take-no-prisoners about the famed lyrics:

With a fight song like that, there's a certain standard to live up to. You can't have a fight song like that and be a wimp. If you have a fight song like that, you gotta get out there and kick some ass. And in a class of extraordinary folks, I think the classmate of mine who might most embody the ethos of that song is my classmate Khalid...

Dynamo -- an excellent word to describe my classmate Khalid (not his real name, of course), a man with an ever-ready laugh and crackling energy. He jokingly claims to be a man without shame; the rest of us would call him the man without fear. Always at the center of action, always in the middle of the mix, one can take the stereotype of the beaten down, exhausted, conformist medical student and whatever the opposite end of the curve from there is, you'll find Khalid there. He's the kind of guy that, just because the third year of medical school wasn't enough of a challenge, he also plays hard-core Rugby at a high enough level he was invited to compete for the US National team, in a league where his practices are in a city a full hour away from Ann Arbor. With powerful muscles, ready humor, and an explosive energy, Khalid's the kind of guy who powers through everything without hesitation or fear like the bezerkers of old. From opponents in a Rugby game to the past six months I've been priveleged to serve with him together on the same series clinical rotations, Khalid's a no-holds-barred ass-kicker.

Which is especially awe-inspiring, given that Khalid essentially has no legs.

My second year here at U. Michigan, Khalid was a high school senior piling on hours helping in the restaurant his family owned. Too many hours. Exhausted, he fell asleep at the wheel just days before his high school graduation. After the rescue workers extracted him from the wreck, Khalid was helicoptered to U. Michigan, where some of the nation's best trauma and neurological surgeons barely won the fight to save his life. When Khalid first woke up, he started out with a T6/T7 spinal cord injury, no ability to breathe independently, no bowel or bladder control, and practically no movement in any of his limbs.

It took months of successive follow-up surgeries and excruciatingly painful rehabilitation before he could even regain a semblence of independent function. Even after he eventually rolled out of University Hospital on the wheelchair in which he has lived ever since, he spent months more retraining himself in specialized centers. He even moved to the Windy City for a whole summer to work with the therapists and physicans at Northwestern University's Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, widely regarded as the nation's premiere facility of it's kind. After eight years of unrelenting effort, he still remains confined to his wheelchair. But even while clawing his way up that mountain, he powered his way through undergrad here at U. Michigan. He built an impressive enough academic record to win against over four-thousand other applicants into one of U. Michigan's 170 seats, an impressive enough academic record to be one of less than thirty to win one of U. Michigan's prestigious merit scholarships. And still finds time to be one of the leading scorers on his statewide wheelchair Rugby team.

Rugby was never a sport for wimps to start out with; and when you put fierce competitors on wheelchairs in a full-contact game you basically cross the brutal chaos of Rugby with the crash of a demolition derby. Except, of course, the drivers in a demolition derby are wearing helmets and safely encased in steel car frames, while wheelchair rugby competitors take it unpadded -- vicious crashes and all -- like their traditional rugby counterparts. They call it Murderball for a reason. Khalid was good enough to win an invitation to compete for a slot on the US National team for the 2006 World championships, and while he didn't make that cut, he's working torwards making the next one, in time for his first year of residency -- and the 2008 games in Beijing.

Khalid's a standout even among classmates who had to be among the nation's best to get in, and he did it all while having to fight night and day just to regain the kinds of basic function the rest of us take for granted. He didn't even need to take any extra time between high school and med school to do it all, even when most successful pre-med candidates wait a year or two after college to make their med school application runs. Khalid's not the kind of guy who wants anyone's pity. Khalid's not the kind of guy who *needs* anyone's pity. Khalid essentially has half a body but the heart of ten men, kicks more ass with no legs than most of the rest of us, his classmates, do with two. And his story is a forceful reminder of something that sometimes can be very easy to forget...

Through my months on surgery, on neurology, on neurosurgery and inpatient Pediatrics, again and again we worked with patients crippled by strokes, auto accidents, diving injuries, freak falls, healthy young people suddenly paralyzed and physically devastated. Through round after round of surgery, through battling through infection after infection because they can't clear their own throats or shuffle themselves to avoid bed sores, through infintesimal progress and sudden setback, we help them fight every day. And in the midst of those seemingly endless days of barely measureable progress and constant trial, it's natural for our patients to often wonder whether there's really any point, any purpose, whether it really makes any kind of real difference. Sometimes, in our own moments of weakness after thirty hours on shift, the little devils on our shoulders whisper the same questions to us, too. After a devastating sudden injury or illness which turns the body from a magnificent engine into a prison of flesh, what kind of future can one realistically see for themselves? What can we really expect the young man laying flat on his back, a machine breathing through a hole in his neck, his bones held together with plates and rods, where can we really expect him to be in eight years?

It's impossible to predict such things, of course. But guys like Khalid are one possible answer. Years ago, at the time I was a second year med student, he was the immobile patient on the floor whose survival required the constant effort of dozens of staff, lurching from one crisis to another. Today he's training to be the guy in the operating theatre keeping patients like himself alive. A year from now, he'll be at Hill Auditorium with the rest of our class to recieve his chevrons and green velvet hood. And in 2008, he might be rolling into the Olympic stadium in Beijing with the red, white and blue on his back. Khalid doesn't see himself as anybody special, but then again, no real champion ever does. And if there was ever a member of our medical school class who embodied the ideal of the fight song for which Michigan is famous, it would be him, and I'm humbled and honored to have had the chance to serve with him.

Hail to the victors valiant. Hail to the conquering heroes.

legends, u michigan