TRIPLE AMPUTEE TO RECIEVE MEDICAL DEGREE

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A woman who lost both legs and one arm as a child is poised to become a doctor for children.

    Kellie Lim, who became a triple amputee at age 8 because of bacterial meningitis, is to graduate from UCLA Medical School on Friday, and she plans to focus on childhood allergies and infectious disease.

    The Michigan native, 26, does not use a prosthetic arm and manages to perform most medical procedures - including giving injections and taking blood - with one arm. She walks on a pair of prosthetic legs.

    "Just having that experience of being someone so  ill and how devastating that can be - not just for me but for my family, too - gives me a perspective that other people may not have," Lim said.

    Raised by a blind mother in suburban Detroit, Lim went through years of wheelchairs and painful therapy after toxic shock from the meningitis [that] claimed her limbs and three fingertips on her remaining hand.

    Lim recently saw 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"

    Lim's teachers and fellow students said she exudes a calm that makes them and her patients forget her physical circumstances.

Deseret Morning News, Monday, May 29, 2007

EXPLORER VAUGHAN DIES

AT AGE 100

    Anchorage, Alaska (AP) - Norman Vaughan, a dog handler and driver in Admiral Richard Byrd’s 1928 expedition to the South Pole died Friday just a few days after turning 100 years old.

    Vaughan died at Providence Alaska Medical Center surrounded by family and friends, said nursing supervisor Martha George

    He was well enough Dec. 17 to enjoy a birthday celebration at the hospital attended by more than 100 friends and hospital workers. His actual birthday was Monday.

    Vaughan’s motto was “Dream big and dare to fail.” Days before his 89th birthday he and his wife, Carolyn Muegge-Vaughan, returned to antarctica and climbed to the summit of 10,320-foot Mount Vaughan, the mountain Byrd named in his honor.

    “It was the climax of our dream,” he told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview.

Deseret Morning News, Saturday Dec. 24 2005

If we want to make the imagination feel at home, generosity shows us the way. How else can imagination thrive but in a place where welcoming comes first and where judgment feels no need to speak and finally feels no need to be?

SARAH WIDER

You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

ALVIN TOFFLER

WHAT IS THIS THING THAT MEN CALL DEATH

What is this thing that men call death,

This quite passing in the night?

Tis not the end, but genesis

Of better worlds and greater light.

O God, touch thou my aching heart,

And clam my troubled, haunting fears.

Let hope and faith, transcendent, pure,

Give strength and peace beyond my tears.

There is no death, but only change,

With recompense for vict'ry won.

The gift of him who loved all men,

The Son of God, the Holy One.

“ What is this thing that men call death,

This quite passing in the night?

Tis not the end, but genesis

Of better worlds and greater light.

O God, touch thou my aching heart,

And clam my troubled, haunting fears.

Let hope and faith, transcendent, pure,

Give strength and peace beyond my tears.

There is no death, but only change,

With recompense for vict'ry won.

The gift of him who loved all men,

The Son of God, the Holy One.”

President Gordon Bitner Hinckley,

Prophet, Seer, & Revelator

“Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quite words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty... Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875-1926

“I urge you to examine your life. Determine where you are and what you need to do to be the kind of person you want to be. Create inspiring, righteous and noble goals that fire your imagination and create excitement in your heart. And then keep your eye on them. Work consistently towards achieving them.” Elder Joseph B Wirthlin, 31 Mar 07 General Conference, Priesthood Session

“Happiness is not a destination one reaches, happiness is a direction in which one thrusts their life, likewise misery is a direction in which one’s life slides.” Robert Schopke

“Those who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt the person doing it” Chinese Proverb

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” Steve Prefontaine

“Happiness is a direction, not a place.” Sydney J. Harris

“The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.” Arthur C. Clarke

“A Creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.” Any Rand

“Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.” Lou Holtz

“Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one’s levels of aspiration and expectation. Jack Nicklaus

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.” Any Rand

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who an I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Marianne Williamson, in Return to Love