Despite losing both the legs and one arm to bacterial meningitis Kellie Lim will make history when she would walk away with her graduate degree from UCLA’s medical school on Friday, May 31. She is poised to become pediatrician and her main focus will be to cure childhood allergies and infectious diseases.
Kellie Lim, 26 hails from Michigan and became a triple amputee at small age of eight. She does not use prosthetic arm and accomplish most medical procedures including giving injections and taking blood with her one arm. Though she uses prosthetic legs to walk.
On her achievements Lim said:
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. I hate failing. It’s one of those things that’s so ingrained in me.
Lim’s teachers and fellow students feel that she exudes a calm that makes them and her patients forget about her physical circumstances.
Dr. Elijah Wasson, one of Lim’s supervisors said:
She has an aura of competence about her that you don’t worry. 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.
Lim will begin a residency program at the UCLA Medical Center.
