By Doug Brunk, San Diego Bureau
When Dr. Kellie Lim was an 8-year-old growing up in suburban Detroit, she acquired a case of bacterial meningitis so severe that one physician put her chances of survival at 15%.
The infection claimed both her legs about 6 inches below her knees, her right hand and forearm, and three fingertips on her left hand. Her hospital stay lasted 4 months.
“The whole experience was pretty terrifying,” said Dr. Lim, who graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, in May 2007 and is now in a pediatric residency program at the university. “I was in dreamlike states for the first couple of weeks because I was so ill, so it's very hard to decipher what was going on and what was happening to me physically.”
During her hospital stay, the team of physicians who cared for her gave her “weekend passes” to go home and acclimate to life as an amputee. Those visits, “were fun because I was stuck in the hospital for such a long time not seeing my familiar surroundings,” recalled Dr. Lim, who learned to use her left hand for primary tasks despite being right-handed. “But it also was a lot of stress on my family. My mother was blind and she was the main person who was going to take care of me, so it was a huge challenge for her, too.”
She was fitted with prosthetic legs and used a wheelchair sporadically throughout middle school, high school, and college, but she has not used one in 5 years. That's just as well, she said. Since she does not use a prosthetic arm, she would be unable to propel a manual wheelchair and would be relegated to a bulkier motorized version.
These days she gets around fine on her prosthetic legs and uses a special turning knob on the steering wheel when she drives her car. She learned to draw blood and administer injections with one hand. “I haven't found that I've needed too much in terms of physical accommodations,” said Dr. Lim, who is now 27 years old.
She credits her bout with meningitis for inspiring her to become a pediatrician. Physicians “saved my life,” she said. Her family supported her efforts to attain that goal, especially her mother, Sandy, who passed away 4 years ago. “My mother was an inspiration,” she said. “She had a disability and she was able to have a fulfilling life. My family gave me a lot of support. That led me to do whatever I wanted—to fall flat on my face if I wanted; to succeed and make my own decisions; and to live my life through my own decisions.”
Dr. Lim describes her pediatric residency program as “challenging and complicated” but is confident she made the right career choice. “It's rewarding in that when you ask patients questions, they actually answer them [even if the questions are] very personal,” she commented. “I'm a stranger and yet they're able to tell me a lot of things in a straightforward way. That's a different aspect about being a physician that I didn't think about when I applied to medical school.”
There are awkward moments, such as when young patients ask, “Why don't you have fingers?” After all, Dr. Lim said, the visit is supposed to be about the patient and his or her concern, not about the physician. “I do acknowledge their question,” she said. “I say, 'Yes, I don't have fingers. That's a great observation.'” Then she gets down to business. “You have to put up that divide between being professional and being personal with the patient,” she said. “That's a very important thing to keep in mind, to practice that every day.”
Dr. Lim's adviser in the residency program, Dr. Virginia M. Barrow, said that Dr. Lim is gifted in engaging young patients. “They really like her and move past [her physical challenges] pretty readily,” she said. “She is a very warm person. I think kids in particular pick up on that. She quickly puts her patients at ease, which is an important skill for any resident.”
Dr. Barrow also praised Dr. Lim's work ethic. “She sets a very high standard for herself in her patient care, her attention to patients and the families, and her attention to detail in her note-writing,” she said.
When Dr. Lim reflects on her accomplishments to date, she credits her success to gritty determination. “If I want something I usually get it,” she said, noting that she hopes to specialize in pediatric allergy and immunology after residency. “But I also know that if something I want is not reasonable, I can recognize that and accept that. There are challenges to being a physician, but overall it really fits my personality. I'm not doing it to prove it to anyone or anything like that.”