A TAB No More
Sandra Shea
I thought of Peter when I lost my TAB status.
I lost it on vacation. These things happen. Suddenly, one Friday night in Florida, I was no longer a TAB. Shouldn’t have been too surprised, I guess.
But I didn’t expect it would involve a chicken.
I should explain.
I’m a medical educator: I have a PhD in experimental psychology/neuroscience, and I teach first-year medical students. In our curriculum, the students work through patient cases that are grouped by organ system. At the end of each case, we have a wrap-up in which we highlight the case’s diagnostic features and answer any student questions. Most of these discussions are faculty-led, but occasionally they’re run by a patient whose history mirrors the case we’re studying. Peter was one of these.
Like the patient in one of the neurological cases, he had fractured his spine in a diving accident. In a matter of seconds, he’d been transformed from a typical teenager to a tetraplegic (someone paralyzed from the shoulders down), although he retained some motion in one arm.
Peter opened his sessions by telling the students that he would answer any questions » Continue Reading.