Making the Rounds with the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV

Making the Rounds

August 10, 2021 Issue 291

Friends & Colleagues,

In today’s newsletter, we focus on one of our third-year students, David Bandbaz. He recently shared part of the reason he came to be interested in becoming a physician.

“For a lot of my childhood I was uninsured, and when I got sick, I’d feel a lot of guilt and not want to stress my parents financially when they were struggling already. Once when I was 12, I took that sentiment a little too far and ended up pretty sick with an infected skin condition I tried to hide with my clothing. Eventually, my parents could tell, so they took me to a doctor that charged uninsured families very little in Las Vegas. When he saw me, he told me he knew I was probably in a lot of pain and that he was sorry for me. I tried to seem like a tough 12-year-old, but I started crying and he hugged me. I could tell he meant it. The doctor who treated my condition really made me feel cared for at a time that I really needed it. Ever since then, I knew that I needed to be a doctor like that, too. I thought that would be a good use of my life.”

Marc J. Kahn, M.D.

Dean, Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV

Medicine By The Numbers

Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral Palsy, a neurological disorder caused by a non-progressive brain injury or malformation that occurs while a child's brain is under development, primarily affects body movement and muscle coordination.

Around 10,000 babies are born each year with cerebral palsy.

Between 1,200 to 15,000 school-aged children are diagnosed with cerebral palsy each year.

Boys are diagnosed more often with cerebral palsy than girls.

Medical costs are around 10 times higher for children with cerebral palsy.

Medical costs are around 26 times higher for children with cerebral palsy who have an intellectual disability.

The total lifetime care costs to take care of a child with cerebral palsy currently exceeds $1 million.

Around 764,000 people in the U.S. (including children and adults) have at least one symptom of cerebral palsy.

Source:

cerebralpalsyguidance.com/cerebral-palsy/research/facts-and-statistics/

Medical Student Conducts Research On Motorcyclist Deaths Due To Poor Licensing Methods

David Bandbaz, medical student at the Kerkorian School of Medicine and motorcycle enthusiast, wants to dedicate his life to serving others. He is the first in his family to go to college, join the military, and attend medical school.

The more you get to know third-year Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine student David Bandbaz, the more you realize he marches to the beat of a different drummer, that it’s hard to find someone with a background anywhere similar to his at the UNLV medical school.

He’s the son of an acrobat who relieves stress by zipping around Southern Nevada’s highways on either his Kawasaki Ninja 400 crotch rocket or his Kawazaki 650 Vulcan cruiser.

“The first time I was on a motorcycle on the highway, my first year of medical school, it felt like I started out with problems coated on my body, but that the problems fell off as I rode. I didn’t worry about my problems. I felt alive. I still get that feeling of freedom.”

Not long after he started riding a motorcycle three years ago -- he says ever since he was a boy he always wanted to try riding motorcycles -- he fell. The fall left him badly scraped up, stiff and sore, and with a broken hand. Though the accident obviously didn’t make him fall out of love with motorcycles, it has helped lead him to undertake a medical school research project with the assistance of Dr. Anne Weisman, the director of wellness and integrative wellness at the medical school.

David Bandbaz

Medical Student

In part, the study, which will use information from the Clark County Coroner’s Office and the DMV, looks at whether the method of licensing motorcyclists affects the risk of dying on one. Bandbaz says it appears a process long on paperwork but short on reality-based instruction has much to do with many bikers not even getting a license. He says nationwide statistics suggest that as many as 50 percent of those who die on their bikes were unlicensed at the time.

“I found out I could take a weekend course to get licensed,” Bandbaz said. “For two days, we rode in the heat, not ever reaching 25-30 miles an hour, with the completion of the course being a slow-speed motorcycle test for my license. We practiced on small motorcycles, closer to mopeds than anything else. Most, if not all, passed and were allowed to buy whatever motorcycle they’d wish. I watched, as we took the test, some barely passing. I thought to myself, ‘we’re not ready.’ But we got licensed. I was free to ride without being afraid of getting ticketed, but I didn’t feel there was a real measure of my competence.”

The truth is that for a long time Bandbaz didn’t think he’d make it to college, let alone medical school, where the project he’s working on could change how motorcyclists are licensed in Nevada.

The son of parents who both fled Iran during a revolution that left it as an Islamic republic in the 1980s -- they later met while working at Circus Circus in Las Vegas -- Bandbaz said his childhood/adolescent years became very difficult.

“My father couldn’t perform acrobatics anymore after a certain age, and my parents had two kids to raise. With a second-grade education, jobs were hard to find, so my dad tried landscaping and eventually moved to truck driving, which he still does. They struggled, but they kept going. I always knew how much stress they were under, and I used to think to myself that maybe I can make a better future for us.”

"I want to dedicate my life and my time to serving others when they’re sick or hurt. I think it’s my way of paying forward what so many people did for me and my family. That’s why I work so hard.”

David Bandbaz, Medical Student

Bandbaz didn’t like the formality and teaching personalities he found during grade school, so it seemed doubtful he’d use education to get ahead. “My parents actually didn’t stress education on me at all. I actually hated going to school...so they figured I wasn’t going to do college and they told me they’d be happy as long as I didn’t get myself in trouble. They hoped I'd find a stable enough job so I didn’t have to struggle too much.”

Yet as much as Bandbaz hated school, he loved reading and learning. “The neighborhood we lived in at the time wasn’t a good environment, so my mother would take me to the public library after she picked me up from school every day so I wouldn’t hang out on the street. I stayed there until it closed every school day and read every book I could get my hands on that didn’t put me to sleep. After that, school started becoming easy enough that I didn’t need to put much effort to get through it.”

In high school, he once again began to entertain the notion of becoming a doctor that he first had as a youngster. Working as a janitor to put some money in his pocket, he applied to UNLV, where a Pell Grant and a Millenium Scholarship helped to pick up the tab.

David Bandbaz in the children’s hospital of UMC, where he volunteered while getting his undergraduate degree.

“From a few encounters with hospitals as a kid, I would associate health care with safety and comfort, so I grew up telling people I wanted to be a doctor. I felt like it was a calling. As I grew older though, I knew this ‘calling’ might only be a dream or a want.”

Volunteering in the children’s hospital of University Medical Center while at UNLV as an undergrad -- he had earlier worked part-time in a daycare center -- Bandbaz realized that his dream of becoming a doctor was something he wanted to turn into a reality. He loved to do his part in taking care of patients and his shadowing of a pediatric hospitalist convinced him that a career in medicine was for him.

“I struggled with college initially, but I knew I couldn’t waste my chance at being a physician once I realized how much it meant to me, so I pushed myself. And the more I challenged myself with harder courses and larger course loads, the more I enjoyed school."

Bandbaz decided to become a physician through the Air Force. Now a lieutenant, after graduation from the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine he will serve as a military doctor for six years in exchange for the Air Force covering the cost of his schooling.

“I have to say I’m patriotic,” Baldbaz says. “I love my parents, this city and I love this country. My mom came here as a refugee. I’m so grateful. I’m the first in my family to graduate from college, the first to join the military, the first to go to medical school. I want to dedicate my life and my time to serving others when they’re sick or hurt. I think it’s my way of paying forward what so many people did for me and my family. That’s why I work so hard.”