Evelyn Spiro, R. Professor of Pediatric Neurosurgery, having retired on June 30, Some career highlights include the first separation of craniopagus Siamese twins joined at the back of the head in , the first completely successful separation of type-2 vertical craniopagus twins in in South Africa, and the first successful placement of an intrauterine shunt for a hydrocephalic twin. Although he has been involved in many newsworthy operations, he feels that every case is noteworthy — deserving of maximum attention.
He is interested in all aspects of pediatric neurosurgery and has a special interest in trigeminal neuralgia severe facial pain in adults. Carson holds more than 60 honorary doctorate degrees. He has sat on the board of directors of numerous organizations, including Kellogg Company, Costco Wholesale Corporation, the Academy of Achievement, and is an Emeritus Fellow of the Yale Corporation, the governing body of Yale University. He was appointed in by President George W.
In , Dr. In February , Dr. Bush at the White House. In June , he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the President, which is the highest civilian honor in the land. He has literally received hundreds of other awards during his distinguished career. In accordance with federal ethics rules, Dr. Carson I was inspired by the mission stories in church, that frequently featured missionary doctors who travelled the world at great personal expense to bring not only physical, but mental and spiritual healing to others.
I was attracted to kids, because I like to get a big return on my investment. Helping people realize that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you in life is YOU!
Other educators helped him to stay focused when outside influences pulled him off course. Despite his academic successes, Carson had a raging temper that translated into violent behavior as a child. In his autobiography, he stated that he once tried to hit his mother with a hammer because she disagreed with his choice of clothes. His mother had in fact said in a Detroit Free Press article that she was the one wielding the hammer, with her other son Curtis intervening in the argument.
At another time, he claimed to have inflicted a head injury on a classmate in a dispute at his locker. In a final incident, Carson said he nearly stabbed a friend after arguing over a choice of radio stations. According to Carson, the only thing that prevented a tragic event was the knife blade allegedly broke on the friend's belt buckle.
Not knowing the extent of his friend's injury, Carson ran home and locked himself in the bathroom with a Bible. Terrified by his own actions, he started praying, asking God to help him find a way to deal with his temper, finding salvation in the Book of Proverbs.
Carson began to realize that much of his anger stemmed from constantly putting himself in the center of events happening around him. Carson graduated with honors from Southwestern, having also become a senior commander in the school's ROTC program.
He earned a full scholarship to Yale, receiving a B. Carson enrolled in the School of Medicine at the University of Michigan, choosing to become a neurosurgeon. In , he married Lacena "Candy" Rustin, whom he met at Yale. Carson earned his medical degree, and the young couple moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where he became an intern at Johns Hopkins University in His excellent eye-hand coordination and three-dimensional reasoning skills made him a superior surgeon early on.
By , he was chief resident in neurosurgery at Hopkins. In , Carson received an important invitation. Resistant at first to move so far away from home, he eventually accepted the offer. It proved to be an important one.
Australia at the time was lacking doctors with highly sophisticated training in neurosurgery. Carson gained several years worth of experience in the year he was at Gairdner Hospital and honed his skills tremendously.
Carson returned to Johns Hopkins in and, by , he became director of pediatric neurosurgery at the age of 33, at the time, the youngest U. In , Carson attracted international attention by performing a surgery to separate 7-month-old occipital craniopagus twins in Germany. Patrick and Benjamin Binder were born joined at the head. Their parents contacted Carson, who went to Germany to consult with the family and the boys' doctors. Because the boys were joined at the back of the head, and because they had separate brains, he felt the operation could be performed successfully.
On September 4, , after months of rehearsals, Carson and a huge team of doctors, nurses and support staff joined forces for what would be a hour procedure. Part of the challenge in radical neurosurgery is to prevent severe bleeding and trauma to the patients. In the highly complex operation, Carson had applied both hypothermic and circulatory arrest. Although the twins did suffer some brain damage and post-operation bleeding, both survived the separation, allowing Carson's surgery to be considered by the medical establishment the first successful procedure of its kind.
In , Carson and his team went to South Africa to separate the Makwaeba twins. The operation was unsuccessful, as both girls died from complications of the surgery. Carson was devastated but vowed to press on, as he knew such procedures could be successful. This operation was especially difficult because the boys were joined at the tops of their heads, facing in opposite directions, making it the first time a surgery of this type had been performed.
After a hour operation, that was supported by previously rendered 3-D mapping, both boys survived and neither suffered brain damage. Over time, Carson's operations began to gain media attention. At first, what people saw was the soft-spoken surgeon explaining complicated procedures in simple terms. But in time, Carson's own story became public—a troubled youth growing up in the inner city to a poor family eventually finding success. Soon, Carson began traveling to schools, businesses and hospitals across the country telling his story and imparting his philosophy of life.
Out of this dedication to education and helping young people, Carson and his wife founded the Carson Scholars Fund in The foundation grants scholarships to students and promotes reading in the younger grades. In , Carson faced what was perhaps his biggest challenge: separating adult conjoined twins. Ladan and Laleh Bijani were Iranian women who were joined at the head. For 29 years, they had literally lived together in every conceivable way. Like normal twins, they shared experiences and outlooks, including earning law degrees, but as they got older and developed their own individual aspirations, they knew they could never lead independent lives unless they separated.
As they told Carson at one point, "We would rather die than spend another day together. This type of medical procedure had never been attempted on conjoined adults because of the dangerous outcomes. By this time, Carson had been conducting brain surgery for nearly 20 years and had performed several craniopagus separations. He later stated he tried to talk the two women out of the surgery, but after many discussions with them and consultations with many other doctors and surgeons, he agreed to proceed.
Carson and a team of more than surgeons, specialists and assistants traveled to Singapore in Southeast Asia. If Carson seemed destined for any position when he was a child growing up on the streets of Detroit, he appeared most qualified for the role of putting someone else in the hospital-or even the morgue. In his profile on the American Academy of Achievement website, it was noted that Carson "had a temper so violent that he would attack other children, even his mother, at the slightest provocation.
Carson's father left his mother, Sonya, when he was only eight; his mother, who had only a third-grade education, was faced with the daunting task of raising her sons Ben and Curtis by herself.
She worked as a maid, sometimes holding two or even three jobs to support her family. The family was poor, and Carson often endured the cruel taunts of his classmates. A further source of frustration in Carson's life was his poor performance as a student. During a two-year period when his family lived in Boston, he fell behind in his studies.
By the time he returned to elementary school in Detroit, he was, according to his profile on the American Academy of Achievement website, "considered the 'dummy' of the class. After Carson brought home a report card of failing grades, his mother quickly limited her sons' television viewing and required them to read two books a week. The boys then had to give written reports to their mother on what they read. While other children were outside playing, Sonya Carson forced her boys to stay inside and read, an act for which her friends criticized her, saying that her sons would grow up to hate her.
Carson later realized that because of her own limited education, his mother often could not read her sons' reports, and was moved by her efforts to motivate them to a better life. Before long, Carson moved from the bottom of the class to the top. However, there was resentment from his classmates at the predominantly white school.
After awarding Carson a certificate of achievement at the end of his freshman year, a teacher berated his white classmates for letting an African-American student outshine them academically. In his high school years and later, Carson faced racism in a number of situations, but as he said in his interview with the American Academy of Achievement, "It's something that I haven't invested a great deal of energy in.
My mother used to say, 'If you walk into an auditorium full of racist, bigoted people … you don't have a problem, they have a problem. Despite his academic improvement, Carson still had a violent temper. In his interview with the American Academy of Achievement, he recalled trying to hit his mother over the head with a hammer because of a disagreement over what clothes he should wear.
In a dispute with a classmate over a locker, he cut a three-inch gash in the other boy's head. However, at the age of 14, Carson reached a turning point after he nearly stabbed a friend to death because the boy had changed the radio station.
Terrified by his own capacity for violence, he ran home and locked himself in the bathroom with the Bible. With his outstanding academic record, Carson was in demand among the nation's highest-ranking colleges and universities.
He graduated at the top of his high school class and enrolled at Yale University. He had long been interested in psychology and, as he related in Gifted Hands, decided to become a doctor when he was eight-years-old and heard his pastor talk about the activities of medical missionaries. College would prove difficult, not just academically but financially, and in his book Carson credits God and a number of supportive people for helping him graduate successfully with his B.
He then enrolled in the School of Medicine at the University of Michigan. Carson decided to become a neurosurgeon rather than a psychologist, and this would not be the only important decision at this juncture of his life.
In he married Lacena Rustin whom he had met at Yale, and they eventually had three children. Carson earned his medical degree in , and the young couple moved to Maryland, where he became a resident at Johns Hopkins University.
By he was the chief resident in neurosurgery in Johns Hopkins. In his interview on the American Academy of Achievement website, Carson noted that being a young, African American made things different in the work setting. He recalled that in his early days as a surgeon, nurses would often mistake him for a hospital orderly, and speak to him as such.
0コメント