What is the difference between a surgeon and god

Two hours later, Rabiah comes out to report the initial results. Neither optimism nor pessimism colors his voice. He lets one of us-Jennifer-go back to be there when Gracie comes to. My gratitude and relief upon hearing his guardedly hopeful prognosis are so overwhelming that I don't know what to say. Two punctures doubled the opportunities for infection, however.

We would have to be extra vigilant with antibacterial drops. I promised him we would be and thanked him and thanked him and thanked him. How did he learn to do this miraculous thing?

By having brains and steady hands but also by working his ass off. Googling Peter K. Rabiah, we find that he graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School in , following that with a residency in ophthalmology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A yearlong fellowship in uveitis inflammation of the pigmented layer of the eye at Illinois and another in pediatric ophthalmology at UCLA. Board certified in ophthalmology, Graduating from college around made him a little over 40, I figured; his name and features made him appear Arab American.

He wouldn't have been hired to work and teach at Northwestern, one of the best medical programs anywhere, if he weren't really good at his job going in. After that, during ten years of practice, it's fair to assume he got better and better: sharper diagnostic skills, more precision under the microscope, more effective follow-up protocols.

An accomplished healer to begin with, he got used to dealing with some of the toughest cases in Chicago, as well as some of the traumas and complications that ophthalmologists throughout the Midwest couldn't handle.

Here's the kicker. Google also takes us to the Web site of the International Centre for Eye Health, where we learn that a year before Grace's accident, someone had published a paper called "Penetrating Needle Injury of the Eye Causing Cataract in Children" in the distinguished journal Ophthalmology.

The author was Peter K. The guy we had lucked into was the very surgeon you would want peering through the microscope and supervising the aftercare if your child's eye got injured this way.

If his study had been written less recently, the state of the art might have changed. As it was, Peter Rabiah was almost ridiculously well prepared to save Grace's eye. The care she received was as good as it gets, probably could not be improved on. If only we had known this as we drove her to the hospital that night, or argued about where to go first!

Thank God Dr. Rabiah was available, we kept saying to ourselves and telling each other. God forbid that a second-rate surgeon would have handled the case. What's the difference between God and a surgeon? God doesn't think he's a surgeon. A plumber attended to a leaking faucet at a surgeon's house. The surgeon exclaimed, "I don't even charge that much and I'm a surgeon! The plumber replied, "I didn't either when I was a surgeon.

That's why I switched to plumbing. Then there's the young girl who tells her parents, "A boy in my class asked me to play doctor.

The blood sport of doctor bashing is all well and good and quite often terribly funny. Even so, a whole lot of folks underestimate how arduous and expensive it is to obtain a diploma that simply gets your foot in the door of a serious teaching hospital.

A full-scale scientific or medical education, from college through postgraduate work, costs more than a million dollars. Certainly the prospect of a handsome income is a motivating factor, but so is pure altruistic heart.

How else could these folks make it through the long educational process? Premed types and science wonks have to skip a lot of tailgate parties, hot dates, and greet-the-dawn poker sessions to get the kind of grades that make them eligible for med school. Once they get admitted to med school, they can kiss their social life and nightlife goodbye. Yet delaying gratification and working their ass off in med school barely prepares them for the staggering grind that interns put up with: hour days in a series of life-and-death situations for salaries on a par with those of nannies and construction workers, not a twelfth of what banjo-hitting utility infielders make.

What nannies and laborers do is plenty important, but we owe smart M. When Peter Rabiah was in his mids, he was still going to school to learn how to keep children from going blind. In fact, because of the way the literature of his specialty happily keeps expanding in part because of him , he will be in school until he retires. Did I mention that he keeps injured and sick children from going blind, but that the way he carries himself in his practice couldn't be more unassuming?

If a child needs his expertise late of a Friday, when he's already halfway out the door, he stays on for several more hours.

This happens irrespective of insurance coverage, by the way, because the hospital group pays him a salary that doesn't depend on how much they collect from individual patients. Plus it's virtually unimaginable that any doctor would send an injured but uninsured child on her way. Her family might get dunned till the cows come home, but her eye will get treated just the same.

How much does Rabiah earn? Middle six figures, I'd guess. I'd also guess that without the possibility of being well compensated, his and a lot of other excellent doctoring, not to mention breakthroughs in the laboratory, simply wouldn't happen. Whatever income and status these people derive by keeping us out of the clinic or crematorium, they richly deserve. Grace spent three days in Evanston Hospital receiving antibiotics intravenously.

Jennifer stayed in the room around the clock and slept in Grace's bed with her. During the day she took a crash course in eyedrop technique and suture care, both critical to the healing process. She must have been a pretty good student because Grace was sent home sooner than expected. Along with her perforated metal eye shield and cool plastic ID bracelet, she's packing prescriptions for Vigamox an antibacterial liquid to ward off endophthalmitis and other infections , atropine synthetic belladonna to paralyze the sphincter muscle of the iris, maintaining dilation; also to reduce pain and prevent complications , and Pred Forte a steroid to maintain healthy pressure and reduce inflammation.

Drugs this potent, especially in combination, especially in a child's eye, need precise management. We need to get each one into the eye three or four times a day, but not at the same time. As the dosages change, the protocol gets so complicated that Jennifer devises a sticker chart to keep it all straight, peeling off Hello Kitty stickers as rewards for holding still. We also stock a "treasure chest" with Hello Kitty toys, Play-Doh, and jungle-cat coloring books, from which Grace can choose one item at the end of each week in which she "helps Mommy help me get better.

In the meantime, she can't go to school. No jumping, running, skipping, somersaulting, ice-skating, bike riding. Can't even go to the park because dirt or sand might get tossed or blown into her eye. Washing her hair takes an hour.

No play dates for the first month or so, not even between drop applications; the responsibility would simply be too much to lay on another parent. In early March, Daddy begins a two-week tour to promote the paperback edition of Positively Fifth Street, his book about poker.

On April 7th, with Daddy in Las Vegas, the rest of the family move into our new house. Forty-six days after the accident-"Seems like 47," says Mommy-Grace once again goes under general anesthesia so Rabiah can remove the stitches.

This time it's outpatient surgery, though still a big deal. It goes well. Easy as pie, as a matter of fact, especially for Daddy, since he's off in L. At the post-op appointment three days later, Daddy is around. When the smiling Nurse Rebecca tries to put in drops that would illuminate any scarring in the eye, Grace politely informs her, while wrenching herself from her grip, "I don't want the yellow drops!

Once the drops have had time to work, in comes Rabiah. We all say hello as he opens a drawerful of lenses. Off go the overhead lights.

His coal-miner ophthalmoscope makes Gracie laugh when he flicks on its beam. It's the moment of truth. He wheels his chair up good and close, takes hold of her face, peers into her eye, looks around. We watch him, watch Gracie. We exhale.

On the monitor next to Dumbo, an eye chart for kids who can't read yet appears. Rabiah covers Grace's left eye, asking her to tell him what she sees. To test depth of field, he slides some high-tech lenses in oversize black frames onto her face. Turning back to Grace: "OK, you're all done. There are two scars in her cornea, but they won't affect her vision because they aren't centered over the lens.

She was lucky. The ocular pressure in both eyes is normal. Both eyeballs are round, firm, and normal. Bottom line? Grace's eye has never worked or looked better, and Jennifer is feeling pretty proud of herself for getting us through the ordeal.

Grace returned to school, to the park, to ballet class; she hosts and goes on play dates, and is just about ready to lose her training wheels. And Peter K. He is officially and forever The Man. Grace's clear, huge, long-lashed, and flashing blue eye had been damaged, perhaps beyond repair; he repaired it.

The more enthusiastically we communicate this to him during follow-up visits, the more embarrassed he becomes-which just makes him more of The Man. Chicago magazine newsletters have you covered.

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