Suzanne's Mom's Blog

Photo: Jerry Olson for Here & Now
With dogged determination and the help of a world-renowned medical staff, Dr. Daniel Grossman has returned to work as an emergency room physician at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

The other day, my sister and I were chatting with her brain surgeon about a pediatric brain surgeon we knew who once lived in her surgeon’s town. His name was Fred Epstein, and he was not only a celebrated surgeon but a fine human being. I have a friend who still says she would “take a bullet for Fred.” A biking accident at an unmarked construction site injured Fred’s own brain so severely he could no longer practice. And yet, as he gradually recovered much of his mental capacity, he was sought out regularly by former colleagues to consult on difficult tasks.

I am thinking of Fred, now deceased, as I read about an emergency room doctor who has returned to work after a paralyzing bike accident.

Jeremy Hobson and Chris Bentley report at WBUR radio, “Monday mornings are one of the busiest times of the week in the emergency room at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. On one Monday in May, a middle-aged man tells Dr. Daniel Grossman he’s been feeling weak and having heart palpitations. …

“Both the patient and the doctor are in wheelchairs — the patient because he’s visiting the emergency room, and the doctor because of a spinal cord injury. Grossman, 37, lost the use of his legs less than a year ago, and he’s already back at work. …

“Grossman says [of the accident]. ‘I had a weird feeling around my stomach, like a numbness in my mid-abdomen, and I knew that I couldn’t feel my legs. So you had this feeling of being disconnected from the world and from your body. And everybody around me was freaking out.’ …

“Today, Grossman lives on his own. He’s more comfortable in his wheelchair, though he still worries about falling out of it. …

” ‘The only answer to overcoming the fear and the skill is to keep doing things until you’re comfortable doing them,’ he says. …

“Grossman acknowledges he’s needed to pay close attention to his mental health since the accident. But he says early on during his recovery, he faced a choice.

” ‘Option A is, “You are paralyzed, what are you going to do about it?” Option B is, “You are paralyzed. Let’s sit and wallow in self-pity.” I decided for option A, and honestly I think most people do decide for option A,’ Grossman says. ‘But option B seems really easy. That self-pity component seems pretty reasonable.’ ”

More at WBUR, here.