James Wheless has cleaned out the neurologists in Houston and like a bright star is pulling others into his orbit from New York and Colorado.
Wheless is a pediatric neurologist and director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program and Neuroscience Institute at Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center. He was recruited to Le Bonheur three years ago to build the program; he’s such an authority in the realm of pediatric neurology that his entire staff from the University of Texas-Houston made the move with him.
Now, the opportunity to work with Wheless has attracted two more top people:
- Kathryn McVicar moved from Montfort Medical Center, part of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. Her focus in Memphis will be autism and language regression, and exploring the suspected interaction with immunology.
- Robin Morgan left a job operating outreach clinics for Denver Children’s Hospital, lured by the opportunity for plenty of patient contact. Though her specialty focus is neonatal neurology, Morgan brings eight years of business experience in private practice in Colorado Springs, adding a new dimension to UT Medical Group, Inc.
“UTMG also wants kids without life-threatening conditions who still need a neurologist who’s available and can be counted on,” Morgan said. “These other guys have their research and their grants, while I’m someone who can see a lot of patients; that’s what I like to do.”
She recently gained privileges at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where she’ll treat conditions like migraines in patients undergoing cancer treatment. She will also be the lead neurologist in the neonatal ICUs at Le Bonheur and the Regional Medical Center at Memphis, which average about 100 babies at any one time.
Morgan will expand clinical services to Germantown and Tupelo. Tupelo is a natural expansion market, Wheless said. It’s a regional medical center but has no pediatric neurologists, only adult neurologists, and pediatricians in the area have asked Le Bonheur for help.
“This is an unmet need for the entire southern U.S., from the Florida Panhandle to the Gulf Coast,” Wheless said. “We are trying to help with one section of that area.”
In Colorado, Morgan discovered the greatest unmet need within military families; the shortage of pediatric neurologists also affects the Army and Air Force, so they turn to civilian providers near military bases. There was considerable demand for diagnosis and treatment of autism because nobody was providing it in the region, she said. That dovetails with her other passion, Tourette Syndrome, tics, and obsessive compulsive disorder.
“In autism and Tourette there are no pills,” she said. “It comes down to critical thinking and then education.”
The most intriguing cases involve unsnarling depression, anxiety, ADD and obsessive compulsive disorder. Even young patients are masters of disguising their symptoms, which leads to misdiagnosis. Often parents don’t recognize OCD, and are proud that their child is diligent about homework, sports and cleaning their room. When it gets out of hand, the initial reaction is a request for drugs.
“Unless tics are disturbing a child socially or in school, I don’t recommend medication,” Morgan said. “Most important is for parents to accept the child for who he is. We don’t medicate children just because they’re annoying.”
Her interest in this area of neurology may go back to childhood. She was already a practicing neurologist when her brother, past 30, was diagnosed with this batch of conditions.
“Growing up, I just thought he was goofy, but then I started thinking about the rest of the family,” she said. “This has variable presentations within families, but usually the kid with the most tics is the brightest one.”
Morgan’s husband is physician Thomas Morgan, recently retired from physical medicine, rehabilitation and pain management. They sold their 400-acre ranch in Colorado and bought a 1,000-acre spread near Holly Springs where Thomas Morgan raises and trains sporting dogs.
McVicar will work with Fred Perkins in establishing an autism center in Memphis. When neurologist Dave Clark approached her at a conference earlier this year and invited her to Memphis, McVicar was also being recruited by an autism center in Southern California. The chance to join the Wheless team of epilepsy experts was one of several powerful draws.
McVicar believes there may be a link between autism and epilepsy, an idea she can best pursue with those who know epilepsy best. Also, she completed her residency and fellowship in New York and there was always the feeling that she was still regarded as a student in someone else’s mature program.
“Memphis has a young program, and we can build it into something great,” she said. “New York is a great place to be for a while, but I wanted to go someplace where I would be taken on my own professional merits.”
She’s excited about a new 3-Tesla MRI unit at Le Bonheur that can provide pristine images, but the person who closed the decision was a clerk at Walgreen’s. Accustomed to the brusque attitude of New Yorkers, McVicar was captivated by the cashier, who welcomed her to town, chatted pleasantly and helped her find saline for her contacts.
“There’s a ‘reasonable person standard’ at Le Bonheur which is refreshing,” she said. “If you aren’t talking to the right person, they’ll stop what they’re doing and help you find the right person.”
She was drawn to neurology during her early training, coinciding with the deinstitutionalization of chronic patients in the 1990s. She helped people transition from state hospitals to community care and found that most doctors were unprepared for this new type of patient.
“They were getting kicked, bitten and hit by a 50-year-old,” she said. “I explained that developmentally, the patient is about 3. Everyone knows how to deal with a 3-year-old.”
While many people have a visceral reaction to people with developmental disabilities, McVicar discovered she was completely comfortable around those with palsy or autism. She can delight in their complex personalities.
“I realized that this is something special, a gift, that I should use to help people,” she said.
October 2007
Digg
Facebook
Technorati
Newsvine
Google
