Social Worker's Story Published in Latest `Chicken Soup' Book

To say that Mike Segal identifies with many of the patients and families he sees is probably an understatement. Segal, a licensed social worker at Memorial Hermann Hospital, works with patients and their families in the intensive care units of the hospital.

He's "been there, done that" himself, as a patient.

Nearly 20 years ago, when Segal was a medical student at the University of Texas in Austin, he inadvertently walked into a convenience store robbery. "I was going to get two dollars worth of gasoline so I could take my girlfriend, Sharon, home," says Segal. "We'd been studying at the library." Segal was taken to the back of the store by one of the robbers, made to kneel and shot in the back of the head execution style. When the police and paramedics arrived, there was no rush to transport him because he seemed quite dead.

Segal has briefly chronicled his remarkable recovery, and it appears in Chicken Soup for the Christian Family Soul, the latest in a series of inspirational Chicken Soup volumes. (It appears as #2 on the New York Times "Advice and How-To" best seller list of April 23.)

Segal chuckles about the title of the book: his father is a rabbi. "The editors wanted my story, and my family said, `Why not?'"

After initial brain surgery at Brackenridge Hospital in Austin immediately following the shooting, Segal began the painful process of recovery. One week after the surgery, Segal was flown home to Houston. The prognosis was grim, but two months after the shooting he uttered his first words and began moving his right arm and leg. All the time, Sharon and his parents stayed by his side.

Segal returned to UT-Austin to finish his bachelor's degree (at the top of his class), then came to the University of Houston where he obtained his M.S.W.

In May 1987 - six years after the shooting - Mike and Sharon were married. And in 1990, their daughter Shawn Elyse was born.

Segal's entry in the Chicken Soup anthology is titled "My Miraculous Family," and while discussing his remarkable recovery he constantly mentions his parents and his extended family of friends. He absolutely beams talking about Shawn.

- ROGER WIDMEYER

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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