Cristina Otero '21, a pre-med student, asks Kristopher T. Kahle, M.D., Ph.D., three questions: one about academics, one about faith and one about leisure. Dr. Kahle is Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics; and, Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Yale University School of Medicine. He is also Director of Neonatal and Congenital Anomaly Neurosurgery in the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Yale.
CO: Can you tell me a little bit about your focus as a clinician as well as a researcher?
KK: From the neurosurgery side, my specialty is pediatric neurosurgery. I specialize in anomalies of neurodevelopment that include things like hydrocephalus but also things like brain tumors.Because of the nature of neurosurgery, a lot of our problems are both unpredictable and grave.It can be emotionally taxing — but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. In the lab, I use human genetic approaches and molecular biology to find genes and investigate the mechanisms that cause the diseases that I treat in the operating room.
CO: How does your Catholic faith intersect with your profession?
KK: Astonishingly, I find that they intersect almost every day in the interactions I have with patients and their parents. Given the gravity and severity of the diseases that I treat, I unfortunately have a lot of end-of-life discussions with parents about their children and have accompanied both children and their parents during the course of terminal illness. There are many instances in which questions of meaning and, frankly, faith come up. It’s not my job to proselytize, or necessarily evangelize. I think that there are numerous moments in those interactions, though, if they are done well, where I have seen how faith can make a real difference by giving hope.
Witnessing the love that parents show for a suffering child has been to me one of the most compelling reminders of God’s love. I’ve heard numerous times from parents, that if they could, they would trade places with their son or daughter and take that suffering upon themselves. If you think about it, that is modeled in our God being one who loved us to the extent that Christ suffered for us. To me, as a parent who can’t imagine my son or daughter going through something like that, this paradigm of love in the most extreme circumstances, is invigorating. To see how parents respond to these challenging circumstances and continue to exude love and hope for their child even when it is seemingly — and often is — hopeless has been a humbling situation. To be able to participate in a small way in those experiences ha increased my own faith. I know for other people that witnessing such trials is a stumbling block to their faith, but the astonishing thing tome about our faith is that what hangs in STM’s Chapel is a crucified guy. If that’s the symbol of our faith, we are saying that even in that most heinous, extreme moment, we profess that our God is there. I see that daily. I’ve seen some of the most rock-solid faith responses in settings, where I wonder, “How would I do if I were in that situation? Would I be cursing God, like Job? Would I have a faithful response?” Basically, I don’t know how I would do my job without my faith.
CO: When you are not in the hospital or in the lab, what do you like to do in your free time?
KK: I have two kids, so when I’m not in the hospital, I love to be around my family. My wife has relatives all over the world so we like to travel a lot. We love nature, love to hike — especially on the weekends. I was a philosophy major in college and I still like to read theology and philosophy. I usually start off the day with a good hour of going through the readings for the day. I have a good commentary with me that I use to dig through the books of the Bible. I also enjoy reading St. John Henry Newman, St. Augustine, Reinhold Niebuhr and Pope St. John Paul II. Reading fills up my tank in the morning that is usually exhausted by the end of the day.
To learn more about Dr. Kristopher Kahle visit https://medicine.yale.edu/profile/kristopher_kahle/
