Loyola Academy assistant Chris Braier juggles work, school and basketball

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By Andres Waters

Special Contributor to CSNChicago.com

As surgeons performed a routine debridement, an interesting conversation began in the operating room at the Illinois Bone and Joint Institute. With a camera in one side of the patient’s left knee and a shaver in the other, two men listed players from the 1999 Buffalo Bills roster while looking at the monitor.

“Holecek played for that team too,” orthopedic surgeon Greg Portland, a life-long Bills fan, said as he shaved pieces of tissue.

“John Holecek,” Chris Braier asked in response. “Did he really?”

Welcome to a normal Friday morning for Chris Braier. The 32-year-old is a surgical physician’s assistant spending weekdays for the past four years at the clinic in Glenview. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, Braier can be found working with patients recovering from surgery. On Wednesdays and Fridays, he’s draped from head-to-toe in blue scrubs in the operating room.

Such a schedule would be overwhelming for any man, but not Braier. The former Division III basketball Player of the Year also balances coaching hoops part-time at Loyola Academy with obtaining a second Master’s degree in business at Northwestern University. And he’s in the middle of planning his wedding.

Normally, on Fridays, Braier, who lives in downtown Chicago, will get up at 5:45 a.m. to leave his house no later than 6:15. But, that Friday was different.

Read the full story at Medill Reports Chicago.

CSN Chicago, in partnership with Northwestern University,  features journalism by students in the graduate program at Medill School of Journalism. The students are reporters for Medill News Service. Medill faculty members edit the student work. Click here for more information about Medill.

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