Kellie Lim lost both legs and an arm as a child of 8. She is graduating from UCLA’s medical school this Friday.
The 26-year-old Michigan native became a triple amputee at age 8 because of bacterial meningitis. She does not use a prosthetic arm and manages to perform most medical procedures—including giving injections and taking blood—with one arm.
“Just having that experience of being someone so sick and how devastating that can be—not just for me but for my family too—gives me a perspective that other people don’t necessarily have,” Lim said.
Raised in suburban Detroit by a blind mother, Lim went through years of wheelchairs and painful therapy after toxic shock from the meningitis claimed her limbs and three fingertips on her remaining hand. She recently returned to Michigan and looked at her childhood medical file and learned that doctors had given her an 85 percent chance of dying of the meningitis.
Just five months after the amputations Lim returned to a normal school. Born right-handed, she learned to write and work with her left.
“I hate failing,” she said. “It’s one of those things that’s so ingrained in me.”
Now she walks—some say she bounces—around campus and through hospital hallways on a pair of prosthetic legs, sitting during bedside rounds only when painful skin ulcers are aggravated by the legs. Lim’s teachers and fellow students said she exudes a calm that makes them and her patients forget her physical circumstances.
“She has an aura of competence about her that you don’t worry,” said Dr. Elijah Wasson, one of Lim’s supervisors. “At first you notice her hand is not there. But after about five minutes, she is so comfortable and so competent that you take her at face value and don’t ask questions so much.”
She will begin a residency program at the UCLA Medical Center and plans to focus on childhood allergies and infectious diseases.
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Gosh, it would be so ethical of you to give credit to Larry Gordon, whose story from the L A Times you just ripped off.
Gosh, it’s so pathetic that people are in such a rush to pass rude remarks even before checking the facts.
1. The story was credited in the original, and as yet, unchanged version.
2. My source for the post is http://www.mercurynews.com , and not Mr Larry Gordon’s story from the LA Times, which I don’t see in the above URL.
hi RK
You’ve given credit to source, and that’s it man! It’s a blog, and when you carry items of news, you DON’T create them in your head, you gotta have a source.
If you’ve shown the credits, job accomplished, dude. Because of people like you, more people will be able to read such inspiring stories!
Keep up the good work. Good luck.
That is very inspiring and wish there are more people like that in the world. What a role model Kellie is for all the young girls out there and people who do not believe they can.
hi Susie
Thank you for your comment, because it will help spread the word (even the tiniest bit) that anything can be achieved….
I really started this blog with that idea — to ‘create’ hope for the hopeless (as I once was so myself)…. but I’m not really putting in my best efforts.
Comments like yours will inspire me into working more towards my goal.
Thank you! I think you are doing a wonderful job.. keep up your passion and that will translate.
best wishes always