Quadriplegic doctor Dinesh Palipana on injury, discrimination, and protecting young doctors
He was left a quadriplegic after a car accident 14 years ago. But Dinesh Palipana defied the odds to become an emergency room doctor. Now, he’s taking aim at a medical fraternity that needs to do more to protect the next generation.
What was it like spending the first 10 years of your life in Sri Lanka during a time of intense conflict? My parents protected me in a difficult environment. There was a war raging around us. I grew up in a regional town where most of the families were fishermen, and I have a lot of memories of a happy childhood, of riding my little bike to the bakery and smelling all the delicious baked goods – but at the same time, we could drive and see body parts or dead bodies on the side of the road. One of my strongest memories is a recollection of people being burnt alive in piles of tyres.
How do you think growing up in that situation has shaped you as an adult? I think it comes down to opportunity. And there’s so much here. How lucky I am to be here and have access to all this. I probably wasn’t as aware of it as a young man but after I had the accident [Palipana sustained spinal cord injuries in a car accident in Brisbane in 2010 and is now quadriplegic], it crystallised for me.
Why did you return to Sri Lanka after your accident? One of the aspects of this injury is that I found it hard to face myself after it happened. I had this idea of what I looked like, how I functioned, and how I was seen in the world. And after the accident happened, probably for about a year or two, I didn’t look at myself in the mirror. It was really hard to face myself. Going away from the world I knew in Australia, back to Sri Lanka, where no one had seen me for a long time, where I was sort of invisible, I was able to be comfortable. There’s this beautiful haiku that I love, which says, “My barn having burnt down, I can finally see the moon.” Being there, I think, allowed me more time to let the barn burn down.
How did you use that time? It just gave me a lot of time to think, and maybe I didn’t want that time, but I needed it, just to process what was happening. I read a lot. About Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and philosophy. I read The Count of Monte Cristo and got inspired - not so much about how he comes back and takes revenge on everyone - but more about the reinvention. I thought, you know what this is? This is an opportunity to reinvent myself. To take the broken and try to make something better out of it.
You returned to Australia and finished medical school, and today you’re an emergency room doctor at Gold Coast University Hospital, but it has not been an easy road. Tell us about it. The discrimination [around my disability] shocked me at the start, and I think maybe I was naive – like I thought, “OK, we’re in the 2010s, the world is a different place, and this surely is not a thing.” Growing up in Australia, I’d never experienced anything like that; even as a migrant I never experienced any racism. As the years went on and as we worked through some of those initial barriers, the discrimination became less and less for me, but the sad thing is, I often get contacted by people experiencing it at school, university, and workplaces. No question it is still endemic.
Do you think the medical fraternity did enough to look after you, as well as other junior doctors? I read once that one of the sad realities of life is that the new and upcoming must endure the abuses of the entrenched. Some excellent senior doctors nurture others to come through the system and are kind and are good teachers – but at the same time, we have a culture where junior doctors experience bullying and a toxic work culture. How can we take care of our patients if we don’t care for each other?
What attributes do you think make a great doctor? This is such a deeply human activity. It was once said that, where there’s a love of practicing medicine, there needs to be a love of humanity. So I think to be a good doctor, you must love humanity, and everything else flows out of that. I think empathy flows from that, kindness flows from that, and resilience flows out of that.
In your early 20s you experienced an inexplicable period of depression. You say in your 2022 book Stronger that “depression paralyzed me in a way a spinal cord injury never has”. What do you mean by that? When I had depression I couldn’t taste the food and I didn’t see the colours in the world. I didn’t enjoy the music. Everything was dull, everything is grey, everything was anxious, everything scary. My entire world was a different place. I struggled at university, I lost my job, I struggled with relationships, and then I struggled to even go out the house. But today, I work. I work a couple of different jobs. I have such a good time every day. It’s such a vastly different experience. And so I wonder, is it actually our body that is important, or the mind?
What’s the answer? I think it’s the soul. I think happiness comes from within.
Do you believe in fate? So, Sri Lanka, where I was born, was once called Serendib, and the word ‘serendipity’ comes from that name, and I feel like my life has very much been like that. As doctors and throughout our education, we’re taught logic and science but yes my life has often begged me to wonder, does it all really happen by chance.
Beyond the emergency room you also work in the area of spinal cord research. Your project BioSpine, run in conjunction with Griffith University, explores the benefits of virtual reality (VR) technology on people with spinal cord injury. Where’s the project up to? We’re currently recruiting 20 to 40 people to go through our intervention. Our lab is running every day. We have a team that’s really passionate about making this a reality. We want to see people gain function again and there are some very promising early results.
How close are we to seeing really significant medical breakthroughs that can restore movement for those with spinal cord injuries? It’s really hard to give timelines, but around the world we’re seeing so much promising research that I think it’s becoming about consolidation. One researcher in the US described the current state of affairs as like the Model T Ford of spinal cord injury recovery, as all the different parts begin to come together. We just need to keep moving things forward. So, I’m optimistic.
How do you stay motivated? I wonder if it’s fate or destiny, but the last thing I did while standing up on my own two feet, on my own power, was give my Mum a hug. I feel like it gives me strength to look forward to standing up again. She’s the most important person in my life, and she’s given up so much to come on this journey with me.
Hear more of Dinesh Palipana’s story via cmr’s podcast series It Takes Heart, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and at this link.
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