My name is Wesley Chay, I'm an attending physician here at Shepherd Center.
I'm a Florida Gator, gotta do that, go Gators, Gator nation everywhere. I'm from
Florida and I loved growing up there it was a special place, I spent nine
years in Gainesville between undergrad med school and intern year. It's a
wonderful place to learn and study and just kind of grow as a person and I
ended up doing residency here at Shepherd Center and Emory through PM&R,
physical medicine rehabilitation, to the fellowship up in New Jersey at
Kessler UMDNJ, now known as Rutgers, but in spinal cord injury medicine with
the team up there. I had a lot of people in the medical
profession in my family so there was definitely an awareness of a lot of
different healthcare professions, but I think that I've always had a desire to
help people.
In 2008 I came here to start residency, spent time on the spinal cord
injury units, the brain injury units, specialized training, it was just the
best time of my education and training, it was amazing and I got
to meet people, I got to meet people with spinal cord injury who were back to life,
back to family, back to work, and that's what this is all about, that's why I do
what I do. !e have Emory PM&R residents coming
through, we have orthopedic residents from AMC coming through, some nurse
practitioner training programs are looking to work here and have some
clinical time here as well, with PAs as well, so I'm kind of overseeing all of
the folks in graduate medical education who want to learn from the
wealth of information and experience that Shepherd has to offer.
The philosophy or the approach that I have to practicing medicine here can
kind of be simplified to a couple things
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best. Often times people have a lot of
questions about, you know, when a traumatic injury or a neurological
condition, and comes in like what's going to happen for the future, and there's a
lot of uncertainty and so, you know, regardless of what we see happen, we want
patients and families to be prepared for any obstacle and challenge that they may
continue to face moving forward. Sometimes we see miraculous changes and
sometimes we don't, but either way we want people to be
prepared for those next steps as they come and the other thing is that I
firmly believe in not giving false hope, but I also firmly believe in not
crushing hope where I believe hope exists, and so this really is a very very
special place and that, you know, the culture that exists here from top down
down-up people care everyone cares the resources
that are available here from the support of the community to people,
organizations, companies, to individual people who donate and just
support what the mission of Shepherd Center is, to have housing for
people who are coming from out of town, for meals and massages and other
things. Look, the little things that are offered here for patients and families, I
think they all make a big difference. The advice I would have for somebody is
listen to those around you, work as hard as you can,
and try to be patient. It's so hard, you know, the recovery that we see as
miraculous as it can be often times it's slower than we want anything and
everything lost is always significant and anything and everything that's
gained is always significant and so it's it's so challenging to have to go
through the loss of function or the loss of communication or the loss of
anything it's a lot to adjust to, and so that naturally takes time.
The beautiful thing is that the teams here are set up in such a way to
support all of aspects of things that get affected physically,
neurologically, emotionally, spiritually, you know kind of systemically, that
there's so many different things that that can happen as a result of you know
neurological injury or disease and to have the the specialists here or the
teams here or the groups here to be able to support patients and families
through that whole process, it's a special thing. Probably the most
striking things that I've heard people tell me that really
make me feel like what we do here is worth it is that I've had
some guys lose the ability to say move their legs and stand and walk, but in
time they've also told me that their spinal cord injury was the best thing
that ever happened to them, and you might think that's crazy how
would somebody say that, but the answers and what the words that come
out of their mouths that shocked me and that humble me are things like I'm a
better father now because of what's happened, I don't take things
for granted right now I'm a better spouse now, or you know I'm more
responsible. That these life-changing experiences, the impact of
them are far deeper than just in a sense the mechanical the mobility that some of
these things they are literally soul-crushing, changing experiences that
patients and families go through and for somebody to go through all this and say
this is the best thing that's ever happened to me because of how I've
changed and grown as a person that's unreal.