DATE: Sunday, November 9, 1997              TAG: 9711070111

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E7   EDITION: FINAL 

COLUMN: IMPERFECT NAVIGATOR

SOURCE: ALEXANDRIA BERGER

                                            LENGTH:   74 lines

AFTER PARALYZING FALL, HE BECAME A DOCTOR

DAN MULDOON remembers the date of his accident perfectly: June 23, 1986.

After completing his first year at Mount St. Mary's College in Bowie, Md., he landed a college guy's perfect summer job. Construction. Only for Dan, things didn't turn out so perfectly.

From a second-floor deck, he fell two stories into a basement opening. As he tells it, ``The falling wasn't so bad. It was the land that didn't go so well.''

In the time it takes to snap your fingers, Dan's life changed. He knew it the second he hit the ground. He knew he had just become a paraplegic. Legs bent, unable to move, he lay paralyzed from the waist down.

Taken to the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Systems (University of Maryland's Shock Trauma Center), Dan discovered he had broken one vertebra in his back. It crushed the spinal cord.

First, surgeons performed a spinal fusion. Then they placed metal rods along his spinal column to stabilize his spine, using a bone graft from his hip. He didn't have time to think. Things were happening too fast.

``In Shock Trauma, I saw quadriplegics, severe brain injuries,'' Dan says. ``It could've been much worse. There are eight kids in my family. We have a strong faith. You don't find out until later how your family is really coping. The pain they went through.''

Three weeks after the accident, Dan's parents sent him to Craig Rehabilitation Hospital in Denver. For the next two months, his days were programmed toward becoming independent. Learning to live wheelchair-bound was exhausting. At night, he had no time to think.

His parents' No. 1 priority was educating their children. Dan couldn't let them down. Predating disability laws, Mount St. Mary's College made structural changes to accommodate Dan's needs, widening doorways and cutting away curbs. Dan returned to school. He had only missed one semester.

By the spring of his second year, he knew he wanted to be a doctor. In his senior year, he applied to 14 medical schools. While his friends and Mount St. Mary's didn't see his wheelchair as an obstacle, medical schools did.

``I didn't want to give medical school admission committees any surprises, so I explained being a paraplegic in my personal statement,'' Dan says. ``I got 13 rejection letters. Only Georgetown University School of Medicine took a chance and accepted me. They had several students in wheelchairs who had been injured after entry. I believe it paved the way for me. Georgetown didn't think twice about the chair as a barrier. I was their first incoming wheelchair medical student.''

The Washington Post ran a story. People magazine called. Outwardly, Dan acted confident. Inwardly, he felt insecure. He overachieved to compensate and abused his body. His first year became a disaster.

Dan injured himself playing wheelchair basketball. He had surgery. He developed osteomyelitis, a bone infection. He had more surgery. Finally, he fell behind his class, losing a year.

But Georgetown faculty understood the human dynamics that go with sudden trauma. ``I learned I had to care for myself first in order to be an effective person and physician,'' Dan says, smiling.

After graduating from Georgetown, Dan Muldoon, M.D., today is a third-year family practice resident at the Eastern Virginia Graduate School of Medicine in Norfolk. At age 30, he's about to go into private practice armed with experience and the memory of his deceased mother's wisdom. He says she taught him to assume that nothing is permanent.

In October, the first FDA-approved neuro-prosthesis to restore movement to the paralyzed limb became available. Made for quadriplegics by NeuroControl Corp. of Cleveland, the implanted device, called freehand, sends electrical impulses to muscles, causing the hand to move on command. Quadriplegics who possess shoulder movement are able to feed themselves and even write. With the perfect technology, time to think about it, and a snap of our fingers, walking can't be far behind. Just ask a mother. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MARTIN SMITH-RODDEN

Dr. Dan Muldoon looks over a patient's chart at Ghent Family

Practice.

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