Sixteen-year-old Sarah Schubert listened in wonder as an emergency room physician described a particularly bewildering medical case: a young boy with mysterious paralysis creeping up his legs and torso and nearing his lungs.
Baffled doctors were about to put him on a ventilator when a medical intern discovered a tick on the patient’s head. After they removed the parasite, the boy almost immediately began to regain the use of his limbs, Sarah recalled.
“It’s like a puzzle … like solving a mystery almost,” said the rising junior at the Chattanooga School for Arts and Sciences.
The experience, part of the fourth annual Youth Leadership Forum hosted by the Chattanooga and Hamilton County Medical Society and Medical Foundation of Chattanooga, has made her “much more likely” to consider a career in medicine, she said.
The four-day program, started by Dr. Mark Brzezienski, gives high school juniors and seniors a close look at careers in medicine by shadowing physicians and engaging in roundtable discussions with doctors.