Illinois Medicine

Amulya Gampa Daniel Howard As a child growing up in Boulder, Colo., Daniel Howard yearned to "discover how the world works." His parents, both physical chemists, encouraged his scientific side. He spent his summers in college doing research at the University of Colorado and worked as a lab tech at the University of Chicago for a year Daniel Howard after graduation. Howard looks forward to the faceto-face aspects of medicine. He realized that he—a true people person—would be good at interacting with patients. "I saw medicine as fusion of my sciencedriven, problem-solving nature with my compassionate, personable nature," he says. Growing up, Howard had a role model in his pediatrician, Eben Carsey, MD, with whom he bonded and later job-shadowed in high school, and who remains to Howard "the gold standard" of bedside manner. In another formative moment, Howard waited for eight hours while his best friend's father underwent emergency open-heart surgery for a dissected aortic valve. His chances weren't good, and the waiting room burst with emotion when the surgeon, exhausted but elated, reported success. "It made me think, 'I want to do that,'" Howard says. It's no coincidence that Howard, who will be finishing medical school in Peoria, now names pediatrics and surgery two of the fields that interest him the most. mp s o n mp s o n Spr i n g 2 013 Kelly Kahle grew up in Chenoa, Ill., a city of fewer than 2,000 about 30 minutes northeast of Bloomington. Even as a youngster, she perceived the health care disparities in her rural town, dotted with farms but lacking in physicians. "The distance itself can be an issue, and there's not as much health awareness in the smaller communities as Kelly Kahle in a more metropolitan area like Bloomington-Normal," Kahle says. "People are very unaware of their options." With that in mind, Kahle applied to the college primarily because of the Rural Medical Education program at the P h o t o : J e rr y T h o | As a child on family vacations Kelly Kahle Rockford campus, where she will begin her M2 year in the fall after finishing her first year in Urbana-Champaign. Along with the RMED program, Kahle says the Sweeney Scholarship was a huge incentive to attend the college, alleviating financial concerns and providing a gentle but constant reminder to prioritize her studies. RMED is an elective program that prepares students interested in serving as primary care physicians in underserved areas in Illinois. As an M3 and M4 in the program, Kahle will spend time in a rural community researching health care disparities and solutions. "It's a lack of resources and [access]," Kahle says, "but it's also a lack of knowledge of when it is appropriate to go see your doctor and how you can utilize your long-term relationship with a primary care provider to prevent problems in the future." P h o t o : J e rr y T h o gr a n e 32 Varun Pattisapu mp s o n Photo: lloyd de For a young Irfan Hussain, watching "The Magic School Bus," the children's book series-turned-PBS show, was truly a magical experience. The schoolchildren on the show take fantastic-voyage field trips, including several into the human body. Hussain suffered from asthma, Irfan Hussain which landed him in the hospital on a few occasions, so the show sparked his curiosity: What triggered his asthma? What made his medicine effective? "Ever since I learned that tiny things that we cannot see with the naked eye could make us sick, I was really intrigued," he says. His father stoked his interests, at one point challenging him to research and write about the Ebola epidemic in Africa. Hussain was fascinated As a lab technician at the University of California-Davis, Catherine Duncan-Staley worked on clinical studies involving diabetes and cardiovascular health, and she found that working with physicians buoyed her spirits. Medical school seemed a natural next Catherine Duncan-Staley step, and her Sweeney Scholarship made the college a clear choice for the Berkeley, Calif., native: "It gives me the ability to do something I've always dreamed of." Duncan-Staley hasn't yet decided on a specialty, but emergency medicine and anesthesiology are high on her list, along with trauma surgery. "It may be going a little far to say I crave highpressure situations," she says, "but I think I would get bored in a specialty that never demanded quick reactions." Duncan-Staley believes her type-B traits have helped her tolerate stressful situations and overcome life's obstacles. "A friend once said, 'Be OK with the discomfort,'" she says. "I thought it was a pretty good approach to life in general. If you can't fix, change or escape a given difficult situation, then be OK with it until some outside force changes it, as it inevitably will." That's not to say she lacks ambition. Reflecting on the scholarship, she says, somewhat abashed, that it could drive her aspirations the way Sweeney's education drove him. "Maybe someday, there will be a Duncan-Staley Scholarship," she says hopefully. Photo: Lloyd DeGrane Irfan Hussain Catherine Duncan-Staley to visit his grandparents, both physicians outside Chennai, India, Varun Pattisapu would tag along to their medical Varun Pattisapu practice. He saw what vital roles his grandparents played in the rural communities they served, and he was inspired to see them provide free treatment to the less fortunate. Pattisapu loved science and problem solving, and he thought becoming a doctor might be a good way to combine those interests into a profession that helped people. However, it took a neartragedy to seal his professional fate. When he was 13, his father went in for a check-up and ended up in emergency surgery after an angiogram detected that three of his coronary arteries were 90 percent blocked. For Pattisapu, the experience was eye opening, for both the life-saving care doctors gave his father and the humanity they showed Pattisapu and his mother. "That was a real turning point for me," he says. Receiving the Sweeney Scholarship was a deciding factor in attending the college, Pattisapu says. After his M1 year, Pattisapu will head to the Rockford campus. Anatomy fascinates him and he's good with his hands, so now he's mulling a surgical career. He also remains influenced by his grandparents' generosity. "I've been considering donating time to rural areas or traveling internationally with a group like Doctors Without Borders," Pattisapu says. "I would love to do something like that in the future." P h o t o : J e rr y T h o Photo: Lloyd DeGrane Amulya Gampa of Westmont, Ill., wasn't the kid who grew up wanting to be a doctor. She credits a particularly inspiring high school teacher for her interest in biology, which developed into an enthusiasm for medicine. "I chose medicine Amulya Gampa as a career because of the gratification that comes with it," she says. "Serving others while engaging in something I enjoy is the perfect combination." Gampa remains undecided about a specialty, but she's enjoyed her first semester of physiology classes, particularly cardio and respiratory, and she plans to apply for a research fellowship in pulmonology for this summer. In the meantime, she is trying to get as much exposure to different fields as she can. She does know she wants to spend some time abroad. "It would be a great way to serve other cultures while doing my job," she says. Like the other Sweeney Scholarship recipients, Gampa says the lessened financial burden allows her to explore various specialties with a focus on her passions. "Since they gave me this scholarship, I feel that I really should do well in school—I make it a goal for myself to [perform] above average on every exam," she says. "I don't stress myself out about it, but it keeps me from slacking off, and it creates a goal for me." by the simple virus and taken aback by its deadliness. To this day, he has an interest in infectious diseases. In addition to the sciences, Hussain has pursued volunteerism, including a stint in the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System's physical therapy department. Hussain says volunteer work prepared him to work unselfishly to improve his patients' lives and instilled a passion to serve his community via public health. "Medicine is a beautiful marriage of the art of helping ease the pain and suffering of others and the science of how our bodies, our minds and the environment around us work and interact with each other," he says.

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