Christine Y. Todd, MD Biography

Christine Y. Todd, MD - Assistant Professor, Internal Medicine

Office Phone: 217-545-6914

Christine Todd was born one week past her due date on January 1st, 1967 in Charleston , South Carolina. Her late arrival caused quite a few problems for her father, who was about to ship out on a Navy nuclear submarine headed for Scotland, and her brother, who had to have been sick of all the hoopla by the time she was finally born. By failing to be born a mere six hours earlier, she cheated her parents out of a deduction on their income tax that year. Some members of her family resent the fact that even though she was born on New Years Day, she was not the very first baby born that year in Charleston, thus failing to win the coveted ten dollar Piggly Wiggly gift certificate.

Despite such a disappointing start in life, Dr. Todd managed to get things together and put together a not too shabby elementary and secondary school effort which afforded her the opportunity to attend the University of Chicago on a National Merit Scholarship. While in college, she was also awarded the Montgomery Ward Grant for students in the Humanities (this was before Montgomery Ward went bankrupt, obviously) and the Florence James Addams prize for poetry. While at the U of C she majored in English Language and Literature and was one of 10 students selected for the Creative Writing Program during her junior year. Saul Bellow, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was one of the faculty advisors for this program. Due to an incident during which he was hit in the head with piece of ice by Dr. Todd when he inadvertently wandered into the middle of a snowball fight on the Quads one winter, he always seemed a little leery of her.

During her senior year of college, Dr. Todd was elected to the Maroon Key Honor Society and was active in a student movement that resulted in a formal university policy against harassment. She was chosen by her classmates to give the commencement speech at their graduation ceremony. Although her major was in English Language and Literature, Dr. Todd had used her elective time to qualify as a premedical candidate, as it had been her goal since high school to be a physician. She felt that medicine was a field in which she could combine her interests in science with her communication skills in order to help others in a tangible way. Unfortunately, her pre-med advisor felt that Dr. Todd should get a job as a science writer or technical writer instead of bothering with medical school. At one point, in a very definitive way that can only be done by someone with a posh British accent (the advisor, in fact, being British), Ms. Putzel (said advisor, referred to by one and all as "The Pretzel") told Dr. Todd that she "did not have a prayer" of getting into medical school. Sheila Putzel, if you are reading this, read on.

To certain people's surprise, Dr. Todd was accepted by quite a few medical schools and elected to attend the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. While there she was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. She served as class secretary during her second and third years and was elected class president during her senior year. As class president, she delivered the commencement speech at the graduation ceremonies for her class, which was the last class to graduate under Dean Richard Moy's tenure. During her senior year, Dr. Todd won first prize in Springfield's In My Own Time writing contest with her poem "The Genuine Article." This led to an interview, aired on National Public Radio, in which she made some vaguely disparaging remarks about surgeons that she now somewhat regrets. Although she had entered medical school with the intention of being a neurologist (an aspiration that she, and those who know her, find highly amusing in retrospect), she found her niche with the internists she worked with and discovered in the intellectual and ethical challenges of internal medicine a gloriously human endeavor being undertaken.

Dr. Todd completed a residency in internal medicine at the University Hospitals of the Case Western Reserve and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio. During her residency, she developed special interests in care for hospitalized patients and in the area of infectious diseases. She also developed a real love for the city of Cleveland. Although it is the butt of many jokes, it turns out that Cleveland is a vibrant, beautiful and historic city loaded with culture and some of the most avid sports enthusiasts you would ever want to meet. During the years she lived in Cleveland, the Indians were in the playoffs and World Series 3 out of 4 years. These were the only years during which Dr. Todd professed to really, really like Pharmaceutical Representatives, since they often had free tickets to baseball games. The afternoons and evenings Dr. Todd spent at Jacobs Field with her residency classmates, wind coming off the lake, seagulls in the air, hot dog in hand and Omar Visquel at short stop were some of the very best of her life.

She was chosen to serve as Chief Resident for Internal Medicine for a year after she completed her residency, which she did under the tutelage of Drs. Jerrolld Elner and David Aaron, Chiefs of Medicine at University Hospitals and the Cleveland VAMC. This year allowed her to develop teaching and evaluation skills, and began her interest in the field of post graduate education. Although she had always thought of herself as a dog person, she acquired two cats during this period of time. Both white with dark spots, one (CatCow) has polydactyly and is a Muslim, while the other (Griffin Aaron Greenblatt) is Jewish.

After finishing her residency training, Dr. Todd practiced medicine for three years at a private clinic in Mason City, Illinois, where she was involved in community education projects, the Rotary Club, and served on the board of the Mason County Health Department. She acquired another cat via a terminally ill patient. This cat, Padrick, is red, fluffy, and Catholic. The fact that all three of her cats can live happily together encourages her re: eventual world peace. While in private practice, Dr. Todd spent one day a week at the SIU School of Medicine supervising the internal medicine resident's journal club activities, which lead to an increasing interest in teaching elements of evidence based medicine to medical trainees. For these activities, she won the Community Teacher of The Year Award in 2000.

Presently, Dr. Todd is a full time faculty member at SIU in the department of medicine, division of general internal medicine. Her primary clinical interest is in acutely ill, hospitalized patients, and her primary research interest is in the field of evidence based medicine. She continues to be an active writer and can be seen at the local Barnes and Noble open mike on Thursday evenings, foisting her verse on bored cappuccino drinkers and gothed-out high school students. She can also be seen in various indoor pools in Springfield, swimming for exercise. I wouldn't approach her at these times. Her Butterfly is barely controlled, and she might put your eye out.

Dr Todd's Top Sixteen Movies of All Time

Sling Blade (Billy Bob Thornton)
Basquiat (Julian Schnabel)
Dreams (Akira Kurosawa)
Run Lola Run (Tom Twyker)
Amores Perros (Alejandro Iñàrritu)
Cold Comfort Farm ( John Schlesinger )
Traffic (Steven Soderbergh)
Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alphonse Cuaron)
The Jewel In The Crown ( Christopher Morahan )
Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog)
Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders)
Pride and Prejudice (the one with Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier)
The English Patient (Anthony Minghella)
Smilla's Sense of Snow (Billie August)
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (Errol Morris)
Gandhi (Richard Attenbourogh)

Update:

Since the year 2000, when this bio was written, Dr. Todd has been busy helping to build and staff the Hospitalist Service at SIU. It has been a challenging and rewarding time. The Hospitalist Service truly fulfills the mission of the school by making it easy for providers in rural communities to send their acutely ill patients to a tertiary medical center for good, collaborative care. Dr Todd has also been able to work with enthusiastic and talented faculty and nursing staff who make even the toughest times bearable. She has also been working on the Educational Innovations Project, a national project for residency programs that encourages innovations in medical education. As part of the Divisions efforts to raise the profile of Quality and Safety at SIUSOM, she moderates and coordinates the monthly Patient Safety Conference.

Although the residents continue to make fun of her at the end of the year banquet and skit night for talking about her cats too much, Dr. Todd actually only has one cat currently. Griffin Aaron Greenblatt, now 11 years old, continues to monitor the avian population outside his home; take vigorous dirt baths in the flower garden daily, after which he looks like Pig Pen; complain about the low cal cat food he is forced to tolerate and in general contribute nothing to society except cuteness, which is more than Dr. Todd can say for a lot of people.

Griffin

Dr. Todd finds it intolerable to subtract from this list, so forget about it being a top ten list (which, let’s face it, it never was) and just get out there and see some good films.

Additions to the list:
Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly) The best superhero movie ever made.
Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur)
Amazing Grace (Michael Apted)
Dr. Strangelove (or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb) (Stanley Kubrick)
The Sopranos (David Chase)
The Wire (David Simon)
Arrested Development (Mitchell Hurwitz)

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