Carrier Mills-Stonefort distinguished alumni enjoys great recoveries of her tiny patients

When she was interviewed, Dr. Karen Diefenbach was still on cloud nine from a successful day in surgery.

Diefenbach, this year's recipient of the Carrier Mills-Stonefort High School distinguished alumni award, specializes in minimally-invasive pediatric surgery. She had just performed a kidney resection on a girl who was having a wonderful post-operative recovery.

"She is up looking at me and showing me her stuffed animals this evening," Diefenbach said.

"There are more days like today than the other."

Diefenbach will be presented the distinguished alumni award at the annual academic Wall of Fame Ceremony 6:30 p.m. Monday at DeWitt Gymnasium in Carrier Mills.

Diefenbach, CMHS Class of 1988, is the pediatric surgical fellow at Yale University Medical School. She has been invited to stay on as a faculty member after the fellowship ends.

Diefenbach specializes in correcting anomalies and defects in newborn babies. Only 38 years old, she is already an innovator in the field. Diefenbach developed training devices to help surgeons perfect minimally-invasive surgical procedures on newborns. The trainers are models of the chest and intestinal cavity scaled to the size of a newborn. The trainers recreate a chest cavity, where suturing must be placed inside a 2 square-centimeter area.

"Someone described this as operating inside a chicken egg," Diefenbach said.

"Every movement is so much finer and so much more delicate."

Use of the models improves motor skills and depth perception before a procedure is tried in surgery. Surgeons have to be extremely well-prepared before doing their first laparoscopic procedure on a baby, Diefenbach said.

Using the trainers, surgeons can develop and perfect laparoscopic techniques, "Or how to sew inside of these little tiny babies that weigh five pounds," she said.

Surgery

Diefenbach said she is well-suited to surgery.

"It is such an immediate satisfaction for me," Diefenbach said.

On the day of the interview, Diefenbach performed a successful procedure on an eight-pound newborn.

"We used literally 3 mm-size incisions to remove half of her lung," Diefenbach said.

The ability to make tiny incisions and work in such small areas reduces the risks during surgery, post-surgical complications, recovery time and scarring that can lead to problems later, such as scoliosis and rib malformations.

"For little babies, a 4-inch incision, that is over one-half of their chest wall you are incising," Diefenbach said.

When she was in private practice, she handled six or seven surgical cases per day.

"With these little guys I've done five or six cases before noon," she said.

"Today I had a five-hour procedure, a three-hour procedure and a surgery for a child to take her off cardiac bypass."

Diefenbach's day usually starts about 5:30 a.m. She works with students until entering surgery mid-morning. The earliest she walks out of the hospital is 6:30 or 7 p.m.

Exhausting?

"It is, but if you really love what you are doing it's worth it," Diefenbach said.

Education

Diefenbach said Carrier Mills-Stonefort High School prepared her well for college. All of her classes had some sort of impact on her college and medical career, whether it was speech classes that prepared her for giving presentations or science classes that provided the basis for college, Diefenbach said.

"Even my art classes with Mrs. (Debra) Jones prepared me from a creative perspective (for surgery and developing the training devices)," Diefenbach said.

When Diefenbach was in school, current Superintendent Richard Morgan was a newly minted science teacher rebuilding the program.

"If you really take it back Mr. (Richard) Morgan was a real inspiration that I could have a career in science," Diefenbach said.

After graduating Carrier Mills-Stonefort High School, Diefenbach attended Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and the University of Illinois Medical School.

Her surgical residency, in Peoria, was also through the University of Illinois.

Diefenbach then went into private surgical practice for four years before becoming the pediatric surgical fellow at Yale.

"It is very competitive and the time that I applied there were 29 positions in the country for pediatric surgical fellows," Diefenbach said.

She was asked to stay on at Yale as a faculty member after the fellowship ends, Diefenbach said. She signed the contract just recently.

Diefenbach was matched to the fellowship through a computer program. Applicants interview with several programs, then submit their choices in order to the computer program. Institutions do the same, ranking applicants from most to least desirable. The computer then matches everyone together.

"It tells you exactly where you are going to go for the next two years of your life," Diefenbach said.

-- The annual Wall of Fame ceremony and presentation of the distinguished alumni award will be 6:30 p.m. Monday at DeWitt Gymnasium.