Doctors who deal with conditions like cerebral palsy, meningitis, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis are called neurologists. They're in great demand.
Dr. Karen Roos is the program director in the neurology department at Indiana University. She specializes in infections of the central nervous system. These infections include meningitis, encephalitis, prion diseases and HIV. (Prion diseases are infectious diseases of the brain that can be spread between animals and people. Mad cow disease is one example.)
Roos says fate got her interested in treating infectious diseases. While working as an intern in the emergency room at a hospital in Virginia, a helicopter brought in a coal miner from West Virginia. The man had a fungal brain infection.
"I took care of him," she says. "It was the beginning of my realization that I wanted to treat people with brain infections."
Roos works 50 to 60 hours a week. Her day usually begins by making rounds in the hospital. She visits patients accompanied by medical students and neurology residents who are learning the profession. Rounds usually last anywhere from two to four hours.
"They always feel a little longer on Friday than on Monday," she laughs.
At noon, she might give a lecture to a class of students. Then she might spend the rest of the afternoon seeing patients who come in with neurological problems. She must also teach, consult with other physicians, write, research and give public talks and presentations.
Roos says writing papers and books that help other doctors diagnose and manage infectious diseases is her most important contribution to the field of neurology.
Her greatest pleasure is when she sees a patient recover. Recently, a woman was brought in from an outside hospital. This woman had suffered from meningitis for three years and was in a coma.
"I had applied all of the practices I write about in terms of taking care of meningitis and its complications," Roos says. "It all came together for one human being. She came out of the coma."
Roos enjoys almost all aspects of her work. But she doesn't enjoy filling out disability forms and writing letters to insurance companies.
Dr. G. Bryan Young is a neurologist at a teaching hospital. He has been practicing his profession since 1978.
During his medical school training, he was intrigued by the nervous system and the anatomy.
"Later, I decided to specialize in neurology," he said. "It has been a longstanding interest."
After doing a fellowship in neurology, he did an extra year studying epilepsy and learning to read electroencephalograms, or EEGs as they are usually called. EEGs are diagnostic tests that involve interpreting brain waves.
Since Young works at a teaching hospital, he does a mixture of clinical work, research and teaching. "I see patients, read EEGs, and I teach in formal classes as well as in rounds and bedside teaching. In the evenings, I do reading, writing and paperwork."
He works about 60 hours a week at the hospital, including a fair bit of work in the intensive care unit. "I have an interest in monitoring patients in intensive care," he says.
Young finds his work satisfying and rewarding. He is particularly pleased about co-authoring a book with two other people. The book was called Coma and Impaired Consciousness and was published in 1998.
One of the challenges facing neurologists today is the need to keep up to date. That's important because of all the new things that are coming out, such as new treatments, new diagnostic tools and so on.
"Keeping up to date is harder now than it used to be, and takes a lot more work. But it has to be done if someone is going to pursue this career," says Young.
"But it is an exciting career, an exciting profession. The knowledge is expanding tremendously. I would do it all over again, but I would take more basic science training in high school and university."