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Lessons Learned From Adversity

By Bart Mills, Lima Daily News - Reprinted with Permission

Dr. Raza

December 19, 2008

Life’s lessons don’t always come easy. Then again, Dr. Qamar Raza never expected "easy."

There’s an arm’s-length list of perfectly good reasons why Raza shouldn’t be as accomplished as he is today. There’s an even grander tab of excuses for why he shouldn’t be so optimistic. But the St. Rita’s Medical Center emergency room physician and father of three needs just one reason to be all he is: His mother.

“She played a very central role in my life. She would not let me pity myself. From the time I was very small, even though there were things other people didn’t think I could do, she said, ‘He can do it,’ and I did,” Raza said.

That optimism didn’t always come easy. At 1 year old, the Pakistan-born Raza contracted polio. The disease left him with a weakened left leg and problems learning to walk. His mother was forced to stand by and watch as her boy pulled himself up, tumbled and fell, only to pull up and try it again. “I’d walk and I’d fall, then I’d get up and try it again. I still have battle scars from the falls. But she always told me I could do it,” Raza said.

Raza’s accomplishments didn’t stop there, but neither did his challenges. He went on to complete medical school as a gold medalist, one of Pakistan’s highest academic honors. In 1993, he moved to the United States to work in the emergency room at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital. In 1996 he moved with his young family to Lima and began working at St. Rita’s.

By the late ’90s, things were going well for Raza. He had a job he loved, a supportive wife, two children and another on the way. Then one night in 1999, he was driving with his children and pregnant wife when his car collided with a truck. His family was unhurt, but Raza was broken. Eventually, he would find out he had broken his leg in five places, his hip, left arm and almost all of his ribs. Doctors gave him little chance for survival, and even if he did make it, he certainly wouldn’t be able to work again.

“I was expected not to make it. I actually had a near-death experience. If I did make it, I wouldn’t work again. No way,” Raza said. But apparently there was a way. Within six months of the accident, Raza was back to work part-time. Within the year he was back to his 40-plus hour weeks. He now uses an electronic wheelchair to move from room to room, but once he’s in the room he stands to work with the patients. He has a rod in his arm and leg and needs a straight brace to walk, but none of that stops him from working, playing with his children or anything else.

“I see myself working for the next 30 or 40 years. I’m not run-down. I don’t have excuses. I am very active,” Raza said. That work is part of the secret to his recovery, Raza said. But there are other important contributors. His patients keep him busy. His children keep him young. And his wife provides the core of support he needs to keep going.

“After my accident it was another woman, my wife, who kept me going. For people with disabilities, it’s important they have family and others to encourage them, not make them feel they can’t do things,” Raza said. He catches himself on the word disability. It’s not something he likes to say, certainly nothing he’s ever felt. “Disabled is one who is not able. That’s not me. I’m actually much stronger than I was before the accident,” Raza said.

That strength comes from a state of mind. Raza said his challenges have made him a better man because they make him focus on what he can do, not what he can’t do. Once he was able to accept then move beyond his handicaps, others did the same. “The first thing is one has to accept it for themselves that they have a problem, whatever the problem. Once they have accepted it, everyone else will,” Raza said. “I could have gone on disability and stayed on it until I was 65. I could have just sat down and stayed down.”

That spirit of acceptance and work ethic are two things Raza hopes to pass on to his children and anyone else who can learn from his experiences. All parents should try to inspire their children, he said. “I always made them feel that whatever happens in life you should have an energy and strength. You have to get up and get to work,” Raza said. “My wife always says my kids have a better outlook on life because of what they have seen in me. I hope just being there for them is an inspiration.”

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