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Surgeon Allen Van Beek thought he'd be a small-town doctor in Montana so he could be close to hunting and fishing. But that changed after he served as an aviation surgeon in a combat zone of the Vietnam War.
He operated on soldiers mangled by war with gunshot wounds and lost limbs.
"It was hard for me to tell a kid of 19 or 20 I had to cut his hand off," he said.
Those experiences of fighting to save the lost limbs of soldiers led Van Beek to dedicate himself to the pursuit of plastic and reconstructive surgery.
Dr. Van Beek, clinical associate professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School's Department of Surgery, Minneapolis, is an expert in reconstructive surgery. He is probably best known in the Twin Cities for operating on John Thompson, who lost both of his arms in a farm-equipment accident in 1992. Thompson recovered limited use of his hands and fingers.
Van Beek's most challenging operation, he said,...