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Research | Core Facilities | Patient Studies | Tech Transfer | Seminars | Intranet | Jobs | Search | Contact Us | Ways To Give HOME |
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OMRF Stories The Strange Case of Tom Little The Comeback Kid: Mighty Mice Predicting Disease: This Is My Brain on 3-Tesla MRI Autism: A Personal Story OMRF People The Gospel According to Luke (Szweda)
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 By Greg Elwell Born on the outskirts of New York City in 1885, Tom Little was the third of four children in an Irish family that was long on discipline and short on affection. The family wasn’t rich, but as a mechanic, his father brought in a stable income and no one went hungry. Tom was an athletic child and gregarious, to boot. He wasn’t much of a student, but his parents didn’t particularly care, so long as he did what he was told at home. And he usually did. But one cold day, 9-year-old Tom slipped beneath his mother’s radar, snatching a ladle of hot liquid simmering on the stove. So involved was the youngster in gulping what he thought was soup that he didn’t catch the scent of lye as he held the ladle to his lips. The caustic chemical went down the hatch, searing his esophagus as it went. Doctors were able to keep his esophagus open for a few days, yet scar tissue eventually closed the passageway, leaving Tom’s physicians no choice but to cut a hole in the wall of his stomach. The opening was about an inch-and-a-half across, and with a sealed esophagus, it was the only way Tom could eat. Still, old habits die hard, and for the rest of his life Tom would chew his food thoroughly and savor the flavors before pushing it down a funnel, through a plastic tube and into the hole in his stomach. Now you might think it would be impossible to keep a hole in your side secret, but Tom was terribly ashamed of being different, and he focused on keeping his malady to himself. He told few about his accident and allowed no one but his family to see him eat. Each day, before he left home, he wrapped his abdomen with gauze, which kept the leaking of blood and stomach acid to a minimum. Tom’s condition, one of his doctors later wrote, “constituted a constant threat to his ideal of physical integrity and fitness, as well as his desire to ‘belong,’ and he took elaborate pains to keep it secret.” Sometimes, though, belonging came at a steep price.
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