\u201cWhen I was very young, I wanted to be Jacques Cousteau,\u201d says Michael Gleeson. \u201cLater in life, I realized what I really wanted to be was Steve Zissou.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a joke, of course, because Gleeson is nothing like Zissou, a sour, washed-up oceanographic explorer played by Bill Murray in a 2004 comedy. Gleeson is funny, though, and a Navy veteran and MD-PhD graduate of the Geisel School of Medicine. This summer, he\u2019ll complete his gastroenterology fellowship at Dartmouth-Hitchcock and begin his career as a physician-scientist at the VA Medical Center in White River Junction, Vt., serving as a hepatologist responsible for the liver health of 14,000 patients.<\/p>\n
A love for the oceans led Gleeson to the U.S. Naval Academy, where he thrived\u2014until he was struck with reactive arthritis halfway through his education. \u201cI was nearly kicked out,\u201d he says, because his feet and knees were too swollen to march. Ineligible for special operations, which he had hoped to pursue, Gleeson became an oceanographer and meteorologist for the Navy.<\/p>\n
His illness also introduced him to the world of health care and immunology.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had some bad experiences with doctors who couldn\u2019t explain to me what was going on in my body,\u201d says Gleeson. \u201cThey just knew to throw some medicines at me. That was a rude awakening to how little we understand about how the immune system works.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Gleeson had fulfilled his service to the Navy, he decided to pursue medicine and immunology. He landed well, in the lab of Geisel immunologist Randy Noelle, PhD, studying the roles of T cells and B cells in cancer and autoimmune diseases. Gleeson\u2019s physical health improved, too, thanks to expert care and new medications he received at the White River Junction VA.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went from hobbling on stairwells to racing a half-ironman the summer right before my first daughter was born,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
When it came time to choose a medical specialty, gastroenterology stood out. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty clear that peripheral immunity and so much of the body is regulated by processes in the gut,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
Now, as he prepares to launch his career as a physician-scientist, he\u2019s delighted to be starting at the VA, where 20% of his time will be devoted to research. He\u2019s not sure exactly what shape his research career will take, but he\u2019s grateful for how his PhD in immunology informs his clinical practice.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a deeper understanding of pathophysiology and can think about diseases in different ways,\u201d he explains. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t trade my experience, that learning, for anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not even a chance to be the next Jacques Cousteau.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Gleeson MD-PhD \u201910, once disabled by reactive arthritis, regained his health with the right medical care and the help of his wife, Kirsten. His experience inspired him to become a physician-researcher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":7333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[17,757,25,514,381],"class_list":["post-7332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-news","tag-alumni-2","tag-alumni-profile","tag-immunology","tag-md-phd","tag-veterans","author-13"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/08\/Gleeson_VT-half-journey-web.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-1Ug","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7332"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7335,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7332\/revisions\/7335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}