Rehabilitation Journey Leading to Medical Degree

By Dirk Hoffman

A native of Lakewood, New York, in the Chautauqua Lake area, Lawton graduated from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, with a Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical engineering.

Shortly after sending off her medical school applications in the summer of 2019 (including one to the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences), Lawton went on a Labor Day camping trip with friends at a state park in Kentucky.

Then the unthinkable happened, when one night an oak tree fell on her tent.

“There was no storm or anything, it was just an accident. In a way it was comforting to know it was nobody’s fault,” Lawton says. “There was no one to blame, it was just a tragedy all around. A lot of luck and a lot of unluck.”

She narrowly survived the horrific ordeal.

Lawton suffered two collapsed lungs, a fractured pelvis and a broken back in 10 places. She had part of her bowel removed and incurred injuries to other internal organs.

Her left leg remains paralyzed and she has what is considered an incomplete spinal cord injury, which occurs when the spinal cord is damaged but still able to send some signals to and from the brain.

“They said going into the ER, my blood pressure was 40 over nothing, so I am very, very lucky to be here and even luckier to be on my own rehabilitation journey and to get to walk again,” Lawton says.

She spent 70 days in the hospital — one month in Kentucky and another month in the Cleveland Clinic’s Beachwood Rehabilitation Hospital.

“I was already interested in medicine and being in the hospital reaffirmed that. In that sense, it was very positive. I took it as a learning experience,” Lawton says. 

UB had accepted Lawton, but since she was unable to graduate from Case Western on schedule due to her hospitalization, she delayed her entry into medical school by a year.

Lawton had a unique admissions interview experience at the Jacobs School.

“At the time I interviewed, I was still very injured and mainly bedridden. I was spending 21 hours a day lying down in bed,” she said. “I would try to get up as much as I could, but it was really hard to rebuild that strength.”

She showed up at the Jacobs School in her wheelchair and found that she was exhausted after an extensive tour of the school.

Lawton then approached the late Jonathan D. Daniels, MD, the former associate director of admissions.

“I told him ‘I have to lie down. I don’t think I can sit up for the interviews,’” she said. “I was pretty wiped out, so he actually set me up in a room in the Behling Human Simulation Center and I did my interviews lying down in the patient bed.”

Although Lawton never gave up on her dream of medical school, she says she did have some doubts as to “can this be done?”

“I was lucky UB took a chance on me. The Jacobs School has been very supportive, but has also allowed me to define my own needs, giving me space to advocate for myself,” she says.

A prime example of that is in the area of adaptive scrubbing techniques for sterilizing the forearm crutches Lawson uses.

“It started during my OB-GYN rotation,” she says. “The nurse manager of the OR I was in took me inside and said ‘this can’t happen, this has never been done.’ They said they would accommodate me by giving me a seat on the wall.”

“And to me, the worst thing you can do is to take me out of the game.”

That’s when Steven D. Schwaitzberg, MD, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor and chair of surgery, and Samantha Bordonaro, MD, assistant dean for student and academic affairs, stepped in to initiate conversations on how to accommodate Lawton in her surgery rotation.

“They said ‘this student wants to participate, let’s get her there.’ That opened the door,” Lawton says.

Lawton performed a medical literature search and found nothing on the topic.

Prompted by Schwaitzberg’s encouragement, she wrote about her experience and the resulting paper, “Accommodating Learners: An Adaptive Approach to Surgical Hand Preparation With Crutches,” co-authored by Lawton and Schwaitzberg, was published in the Journal of Surgical Education in December 2024.

“With my engineering background, it is very serendipitous because I had learned how to design these devices and now, I am using them,” Lawton says. “It helped with the framework. I could figure out what I thought would work. Then it really was the teamwork of the nursing staff, and even the cleaning staff, to help me hone this protocol to be able to sterilize myself.”

Lawton was able to use the technique to scrub in on more than 40 cases — including laparoscopic, thyroid and general bowel surgeries, C-sections and robotic thoracic surgeries.

Bordonaro says Lawton has blazed a trail for others to follow.

“Catherine is an incredible student who despite challenges, has always been committed to being an active member of the clinical team,” she says. “Due to her advocacy and willingness to address these challenges, she has also paved the way for other students as we strive to make sure that our medical education programs are accessible to all.”

Beyond the classroom and clinical rotations, Lawton has been active in her advocacy by being a co-founder and former president of the UB chapter of Medical Students with Disability and Chronic Illness (MSDCI).

The chapter hosts various events and its members also act as mentors to pre-med students with disabilities.

‘It stands as an example that it can be done,” Lawton says. “I’ve learned not only that people with disabilities can become doctors, but that they should become doctors.”

Lawton says she used to be nervous about how patients would see her as a doctor on crutches because stereotypically, doctors are always the picture of health. But she was surprised to find that her condition actually resonated with patients and helped build a rapport.

Lawton has also been active as a volunteer for People Against Trafficking Humans (PATH) and as a former head manager of its free, student-run clinic that serves survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence, and also doubles as a suboxone clinic.

In 2024, Lawton was honored with the Medical Student Award in the Jacobs School’s Awards of Excellence for Promoting Inclusion and Cultural Diversity, in part for her work with MSDCI and PATH.

Outside academics, Lawton is involved in a number of extracurricular activities, including adaptive skiing, which she was first introduced to in Breckenridge, Colorado, during a gap semester before starting medical school.

When she arrived in Buffalo, she learned about an adaptive skiing program at the Holimont resort in Ellicottville, New York, and quickly connected her fellow medical students to the program.

“For the past couple of years, we have had over 50 student volunteers who have donated more than 1,000 hours to this wonderful program during the ski season.”

Painting is another endeavor that is close to Lawton’s heart.

“I have always been artistic, and after the accident there was a lot of downtime because I was lying flat,” she says. “I actually joked that I would have a canvas set up and paint the bottom and then have to raise the hospital bed to paint the top.”

“For me, it was an important way to live vicariously through the paintings. I grew up a country girl and loved nature so that was really important to me in my own healing.”

Her favorite style of painting is “en plein air,” a French phrase that means “in the open air.”

“I pack a lunch, take a little hike and then I spend the day out there painting,” Lawton says.

Lawton has applied to physical medicine and rehabilitation residency programs.

“I’m hoping to further specialize in neuro rehab of some sort, whether it’s spinal cord injury or brain injury,” she says. “I like the adaptive sports side of the field as well and also engineering solutions.”

“UB set me up so well. I did an away rotation in Pittsburgh and they told me ‘we love Buffalo students.’ I don’t know if it is the grit from the snow or what, but we are hard-working, and nothing really stops us.”

Lawton is elated she chose UB for medical school.

“I love the wide range of topics you get exposed to at the Jacobs School. I feel what they are doing here is something really special, very patient-centered and holistic,” she says. “It is reflected in the faculty. They are so personable that you almost forget you are talking to the chair of surgery or a dean.”

“It has been such a learning experience. I feel like I have aged 10 years — in a good way. A lot of life was lived here.”