She dreams of being a surgeon, but an Indiana woman paralyzed by a spinal infection says SUNY won’t let her finish her medical training.
Svetlana Kleyman, 31, was a marathoner and fourth-year surgical resident at the State University of New York’s Downstate Medical Center, pulling 16 hour days working as chief resident at the Brooklyn Veterans Hospital. She headed home to Indianapolis for New Year’s in 2014, her first vacation in a year.
She thought her headache and fever were symptoms of a bad cold or flu. But within days of returning home, she was in intensive care. “I ran 10 miles a week or two before I was on the ventilator,” she said.
Her mother, Diana Kleyman, said through tears, “She’s talking to me and in minutes, she goes from talking to couldn’t breathe.”
It was months before doctors diagnosed Svetlana’s spinal infection. “They figured it out when she was paralyzed,” the mom said of her only child. “There is always hope, [but] there is no proof or guarantee she’ll ever walk again.”
At first, her SUNY colleagues went out of their way to reach out to Svetlana, sending her a huge card and calling her from their regular meetings.
“I felt very included,” said Kleyman, who is paralyzed from the waist down.
After months of rehabilitation and learning to live life in a wheelchair, she reached out to SUNY about resuming her place in the program.
Instead of a welcome, she got a months-long runaround, according to a lawsuit she filed against SUNY Downstate and her supervisors. She provided medical clearances from her doctors, but SUNY kept putting her off and eventually stopped responding.
Last year, while her class was graduating from the five-year surgical residency program, SUNY Downstate was cutting Kleyman loose. They sent a letter in May 2015 telling her they didn’t have the “clinical capacity” to take her back.
“It came out of nowhere. I felt abandoned. It was terrifying because I invested so much time,” said Kleyman, who is still paying off $250,000 in medical-school loans.
SUNY could have helped her get into another surgical program but didn’t, leaving Kleyman 116 cases shy of the 750 she needs to finish her residency. It’s a “blatant pretext for disability discrimination,” according to the Brooklyn federal court lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages and Kleyman’s reinstatement to the program. “There is nothing about her current condition that prevents her from being a surgeon,” said her lawyer, Daniel Kaiser.
SUNY declined comment.
Kleyman hopes to someday perform breast surgery and help cancer patients. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m [SUNY’s] resident. They owe me to finish,” Kleyman said.