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Plastic surgeon Peter Galpin, right, is assisted by nurse Aida Ventura during a surgical procedure last week at Maui Memorial Medical Center.
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Doctor pushes his limit
Maui surgeon Peter Galpin doesn't let his wheelchair get in the way of his work
Associated Press
WAILUKU, Hawaii » When a visitor from Canada was attacked by a shark this month, Dr. Peter Galpin helped save his life and the use of his hand.
Galpin himself doesn't have full use of his own limbs, but his wheelchair didn't get in the way.
Galpin, 55, is a respected Maui plastic surgeon who began and completed his medical training from a wheelchair. His paralyzed legs were an obstacle that he overcame a long time ago.
"All I do is get up every day and try to take care of people," he said.
He enlisted in the Army at the height of the Vietnam War, training extensively as a special forces weapons expert and medic. Once he returned home, he wanted to go to medical school and return to the special forces as a surgeon.
But one night as he drove his motorcycle home from a physics exam, a drunken driver slammed into him. His arms, legs and back were broken. He would never walk again.
"Once I realized I wouldn't walk again, I knew I wasn't going back into special forces, but it didn't mean I couldn't be a surgeon," he said. "I knew what you had to do to be a doctor, and very little of it had to do with standing up."
With his wheelchair, Galpin navigates with ease through Maui Memorial Medical Center and his private practice in Kahului. He sometimes speeds down hallways past other doctors and nurses.
In the operating room, he maneuvers around the table and across the room quickly and efficiently.
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Galpin holds a patient's bandaged hand.
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After Kyle Gruen, 29, of Vancouver, B.C., suffered gashes to his left leg and hand during a shark attack Nov. 11, Gruen said Galpin saved him. The doctor gets called in on most shark attack injuries around Maui.
He credits the people who believed in him for his success -- the medical school administrators and doctors who looked beyond his wheelchair to see his potential as a surgeon.
After eight months of recovery and rehabilitation in the hospital following the accident, he finished college and later enrolled in medical school.
Before being accepted into a surgical program, he worked with a company to modify his wheelchair so he could stand and move in an operating room.
"I knew that in order for me to be a competitive candidate, I was going to have to go to the program and demonstrate that I could do anything able-bodied surgeons could do," he said.
Galpin said he was never given any special treatment and was held to the same standards as his peers in the highly competitive environment.
He didn't let skeptics stop him from pursuing his dream.
"If you listen to those negative people, you're never going to do anything," he said. "I focus on all the people who said, 'Come on in, we'll give you a shot.' Those are the guys who went out on a limb and put their reputations on the line to open the door for me."
Galpin has also volunteered for medical missions to Afghanistan and Laos, became involved in wheelchair athletics and was a competitive weightlifter on the national level.
While studying to become a surgeon, he and his wife, Nina, became test subjects in a fertility program under the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis.
His wife gave birth to a set of twins, a boy and a girl.
"I look at my greatest achievement as being outside of my profession," he said. "Being a good father, a Boy Scout troop master and a Little League coach are the things I'm proud of."