The students\u00a0witnessed<\/strong> the life-or-death moments surgeons face every day and what happens when the mood in the operating room shifts.<\/p>\n\u201cYou could feel it. I don\u2019t want to say it went south, but it wasn\u2019t going as planned,\u201d Lenkey says, remembering one particular surgery that week. \u201cMaybe nothing was said, but you could feel a different sense of urgency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were starting to close the patient up. One of the doctors had already left to tell the parents everything was all right, and then the patient kept bleeding out of the nose where he was intubated.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt first, they were just wiping it and it seemed normal. The next thing you know, they were ordering a pint of blood. Then one turned to two, five, and I think 12 by the end of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was freaking out,\u201d Ballard says. \u201cI was thinking, they already talked to his parents. What\u2019s going to happen now?<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of times you don\u2019t see when things go wrong when you\u2019re shadowing. But it\u2019s a part of medicine. To get just a glimpse of that was important\u2014to see the mindset you have to have as a surgeon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later, they talked to Myers about what happened.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe spent every waking moment with him,\u201d Lenkey says. \u201cWe would be at breakfast and then we\u2019d think of a question from four days ago. It was like, \u2018Sorry to interrupt this conversation, but I\u2019ve really got to know this one thing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDr. Myers told us how much he appreciates being able to do the work he does,\u201d Ballard says. \u201cIt made me say I want to do something like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day when we were wearing our scrubs, a little girl we hadn\u2019t even interacted with was getting wheeled out,\u201d Lenkey recalls. \u201cShe was so happy, and she waved at us! I\u2019m just like, I didn\u2019t help you, but I feel so good because you think I did! That\u2019s what I look forward to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another little girl was still recovering in the ICU, playing Peekaboo with her dad.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat moment really drove the whole experience home,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s what medicine is all about. You want these kids to get better so they can play with their families. It was a really nice way to end the week, knowing these kids are now going to be able to do just that.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/h2>\n\u201cEverything Good and Noble\u201d<\/h2>\n
Jack Myers is Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics and Chief of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Surgery at Penn State\u2019s Hershey Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n
Yet he never received an undergraduate diploma.<\/p>\n
After the death of his father, Myers\u2019 family faced difficult financial circumstances, and his mother needed helped raising his younger siblings. So he left the College a year early. His sacrifice made it possible for his younger brother, Bill, to attend Wabash less than a decade later.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe talked about his family to us all the time,\u201d Joey Lenkey \u201919 says. \u201cHe loves his family. He loves his patients. I think he loved us too.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wants to make everyone else better. For the first 15 years in Ecuador, he brought his own team, until the hospital started having doctors who were able to do some of it. He comes back to teach them, and it makes it more viable for the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n
Myers finally got his Wabash sheepskin in May 2017, when President Greg Hess conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Humane Letters saying, \u201cYou exemplify everything good and noble about a Wabash College graduate. I am honored to present you with the degree you so richly deserve.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shadowing renowned pediatric heart surgeon Jack Myers \u201974, two pre-med students encounter the harrowing and inspiring\u2014the highs and lows doctors face every day. by Christina Egbert It\u2019s not normal for a baby […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":4330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-videos"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/10\/surgery.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4328"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4335,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4328\/revisions\/4335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2018\/10\/ballard-and-lenkey-1.jpg\")
<\/a>