A major health scare forced Barbara Atkinson away from her duties for about four months last year, leaving a medical school three weeks shy of its opening date hanging in the balance.

“I can't believe I lived through it, frankly,” Barbara Atkinson told me, as we sat at the conference table in her corner office, dotted with flowers and candy, gifts from well-wishers.

A dozen quintets of UNLV students have been probing the valley’s neighborhoods the past few Thursdays, taking note of markets, liquor stores, clinics, pharmacies and access to public transportation.

Barbara Atkinson, the founding dean of the UNLV School of Medicine, is making “positive gains every day” in the hospital after suffering a “very serious” illness, university officials said Tuesday.

Liz Groesbeck is following her one true love — the brain — to medical school. But she’s open to developing a new relationship. “I don’t have much experience with things that aren’t brains,” said Groesbeck, who graduated in May from the University of Nevada, Reno, with a master’s degree in neuroscience. “But I might fall in love with another organ system.”

The Nevada Legislature on Monday pushed forward with a bill to allocate $25 million in new money to UNLV’s fledgling medical school, contingent upon getting a private donor to match the state funding. The funding was added to Senate Bill 553 by the Assembly Ways and Means Committee. The bill also appropriates $1.75 million for advance planning for a UNLV College of Engineering Academic and Research Building.

UNLV’s medical school welcomes its first students in July with high hopes but much remaining to be done. The inaugural class of 60 is made up mostly of Nevada students or those connected to the state, said Dr. Barbara Atkinson, the medical school’s founding dean.

An expanded and more robust partnership might be on the horizon for UNLV and the Cleveland Clinic. “We’re definitely in talks with them about what we can do, and how much more we would like to do,” said Barbara Atkinson, dean of UNLV’s new medical school. “It’s a great opportunity for both sides. There are some real synergies there.”