University of Minnesota Alumni Association : Hope, Healing, and Research


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Hope, Healing, and Research
11/15/2002

By Margaret S. Carlson (Ph.D. '83)

Last year, then-president Mark Yudof asked me to chair the University of Minnesota’s 2002 Community Fund Drive for the Twin Cities campus. It’s a rite of fall at the U and at corporations around the state. I could think of a dozen reasons to decline, but I accepted the challenge; it was time for me to step up and lead this effort, which gives almost $1 million dollars to seven worthy charitable agencies.

At that time, if you had asked me whether my family has been served by any of the agencies that are supported through the Community Fund Drive, my answer would have been, "No, I’ve been unusually lucky, and so has my family."

Luck can change fast, however, and this summer I did find myself calling health care–related agencies in search of advice and insight. On June 6, 2002, my younger daughter Elizabeth was admitted to Fairview-University Hospital. Twelve days later she left with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS). It was devastating news for Elizabeth, who is 29 years old, as well as for me and the rest of our family.

In the past, I had experienced the University hospital and clinics in the most cursory fashion—walking through the labyrinth of buildings and tunnels on my way to meetings or to my biannual dental appointments. But because of Elizabeth’s illness, I experienced firsthand our immense health complex, sitting by her side during the day and sleeping in a chair in her room at night.

I saw teams of doctors, residents, interns, nurses, and health technicians move in and out of Elizabeth’s room around the clock. There was Dr. David Anderson (M.D. ’69), the head of neurology, who had a kind and gentle manner. And there was Dr. Muzaffar Siddiqui, who aptly wore a Superman T-shirt under his white lab coat and a Superman watch on his wrist. He even carried a Superman clipboard. The ward’s medical resident never seemed to be far away when Elizabeth’s spinal tap resulted in an excruciating headache that lasted over a week. Collectively, these professionals gave us aid and comfort, before and after the bad news that we didn’t want to hear.

During this hospital sojourn, I also witnessed the drama and plights of other patients as I walked the halls of the seventh floor, which handles brain and neurological diseases and cancer in women. To say that everyone had fear in their eyes and pain in their hearts might be an overstatement, but it is not far off. And yet there seemed to be a sense of comfort among all of us in knowing that we were at the University, where research might result in a cure or a treatment to hold our troubles at bay.

A couple of months after Elizabeth’s hospitalization, I attended the Medical Alumni Society’s board meeting. The alumni physicians directed their questions to Dr. Greg Vercellotti, the associate dean of the Medical School: "Will any of the tobacco settlement funds be pulled from the Academic Health Center to address the state’s budget crisis?" "Will the new University president value the Medical School, or will he or she think that the infusion of new funds over the years was enough?"

As Dr. Vercellotti tried to answer this barrage of questions, I quietly wondered how I could spread the word about the importance of the U’s groundbreaking medical research—research that has contributed to ranking the Twin Cities campus among the top three public research universities in the nation (ranked by the University of Florida for the second consecutive year). The truth is, our medical researchers are giving the world new hope that gene therapy techniques will soon block the growth of cancerous tumors, hope that defects in the Alzheimer’s gene can be corrected, hope that a new retina or kidney will be created through stem cells, and hope that other new therapies will, some day soon, eliminate MS, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and other devastating diseases.

Elizabeth and I decided to do our part by sharing this personal story with you. None of us can know the future. None of us can know when we, or our loved ones, will need the help of doctors and specialists who were trained at the University of Minnesota’s Academic Health Center. But we can tell you, from our experience, how wonderful it is to know that there are researchers laboring right now to help individuals and families live happier and healthier lives.

The goal of the Community Fund Drive is to support the agencies that support Minnesotans in need. Though not directly a part of the Community Fund Drive, the Medicine at Minnesota campaign heightens awareness of research activity at the U and generates financial support to hasten new discoveries being made right in our own backyard. Elizabeth and the millions of Americans suffering from what will someday be curable diseases ask that you consider supporting our world-class, Minnesota-based team of medical scientists and your own community or corporate fund-raising campaigns.

As for my Elizabeth, she grows stronger each day knowing that other MS sufferers, like the late U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone and the comedian Richard Pryor, have faced the same daily struggles she does and that medical doctors and researchers are working toward a cure. As she said in her journal, "In no way can I ever repay the help and kindness my team of doctors displayed. But to somehow repay even a small portion of the price, I need to tell anyone and everyone who will listen to my tale of the mighty team of doctors at the U of M."

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