Thursday, August 15, 2013 3:01:51 AM
100-year-old doctor’s experience still put to work
After 70-plus years, centenarian still sees patients; some are 4th-generation
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Health Headlines [ 1 of 3 ]
Ohio could save and expand Medicaid, study says
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/public/2013/08/13/Ohio-Medicaid-hearing.html
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By Cliff Radel - THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER Sunday December 18, 2011 6:15 AM
Liz Dufour | THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER PHOTOS View Slideshow
Dr. Fred Goldman receives congratulations outside his Cincinnati office on his 100th birthday. The internist is the oldest licensed physician practicing medicine in Ohio. Four years ago, he cut back from five eight-hour days a week to three.
CINCINNATI — The 100-year-old doctor still makes house calls.
He must. That’s where the patients are.
“If they’re sick and can’t leave home,” Dr. Fred Goldman said, “I go to see them.”
They came to see him one day last week. Patients, friends and family members — some using walkers, some in strollers — gathered in numbers passing the century mark at the office he calls “ the dump” to throw a surprise birthday party for the internist who is the oldest licensed physician practicing medicine in Ohio.
“I almost had a heart attack seeing all of the people in the hall and the waiting room,” Goldman said between greeting well-wishers with a question about their health.
How’s your ankle?
You still smoking?
“People ask me, ‘Why do you go to a doctor who’s 100?’??” said Patti Levine, a fourth-generation patient of the doctor. “I tell them, ‘Because he’s seen it all, and he knows everything.’??”
The Blue Ash, Ohio, resident stood by a stroller holding her 10-month-old daughter, Madyson. “ She’s not his patient,” Levine said, “yet.”
Fellow physicians also gave birthday greetings to Goldman.
“He asked me to come work for him in 2007,” said 85-year-old Dr. Leo Wayne. That’s the year that Wayne retired and Goldman, at the age of 96, cut back from five eight-hour days a week to three.
“I told him I would not work for him,” Wayne said. “I’m too young.”
Would he prescribe retirement for his older friend and colleague?
“I would not dream of advising him to retire,” Wayne replied. “Dr. Goldman is an excellent diagnostician. He knows his patients, including himself. He knows this patient is still up to the task.”
As the birthday doctor worked the waiting room and the hallway, his guests peppered him with questions.
How does it feel to be 100?
He examined both of his hands. He squeezed one. Then, the other.
“Don’t feel anything different,” he said with a sly smile.
“Most people my age,” he added, “can’t feel anything. They’re dead.”
On Fred Goldman’s day of birth, Dec. 12, 1911, he arrived at his family’s home in Cincinnati’s West End.
“My mother — a housewife — was from Poland. My father — a shopkeeper — was from Russia,” he said, “and I was from both of them.”
“Want to see the rest of the dump?” he asked before leading visitors on a tour of his office. He sees 12 patients each workday in his computer-free suite. His schedule is set by hand by his sole employee, office manager Patti Heath.
“I came to work here when he was 91,” she said.
She thought she would be a short-timer. “Here I am nine years later. And he’s still going strong. The first year I worked for him, I collapsed on a beach for my vacation. He hiked the wilderness in Alaska and lived in a tent. They don’t make men like Fred Goldman anymore.”
Goldman married a red-haired farm-girl-turned-nurse named Esther Nelson in 1938 while he was teaching at the University of Texas. They had three sons.
Three years later, with America at war, the Goldmans returned to Cincinnati. He enlisted in the Navy.
He tried to gloss over his service in the Pacific. He mentioned in passing the names of five bloody battles: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, Bougainville, New Guinea, Leyte Gulf.
Sometimes, he said matter-of-factly, he went to the front. Sometimes, the front came to him.
One of his three sons, Tom Goldman, an audiologist at Cincinnati’s Jewish Hospital, produced a copy of a citation signed by Adm. Chester Nimitz and awarded to Lt. Frederick M. Goldman, Medical Corps, “for meritorious service ... on numerous occasions when the camp was subjected to Japanese bombing and shelling attacks, he left the comparative safety of his foxhole and proceeded to the aid of injured personnel.”
Goldman shrugged his shoulders. “I saved some people,” he said with a wave of his hand. “That’s what I was supposed to do.”
A party guest asked the centenarian tour guide for his secret to a long life. The doctor looked around the room. He spoke in a whisper as if he were giving directions to the Fountain of Youth.
“I have no secrets,” he confided. “Haven’t a clue why I’ve lived this long. Maybe it’s because my office is a mess, and I keep saying I’m going to clean it up. That keeps me going. That, and it’s in my genes. My mother died at 91. So did one of my brothers. Another brother died in his 80s. So did my sister.”
He made a short list of his vices. He doesn’t exercise. “I keep moving. That’s my workout,” said the man who gave up cutting his grass two years ago. (He lives alone on a cattle farm in Bethel in Clermont County.) He stopped hiking the wilds of Alaska (“the place I love”) in 2007. That same year, he quit cleaning his gutters — “my balance was off. I still miss doing that.”
He “never” smoked cigarettes. He “rarely” smoked a pipe. He “temporarily” smoked a Cuban cigar after dinner, “but then (Fidel) Castro took over Cuba. When Cuba quit (being a free county), I quit smoking.” He has “no taste” for alcohol. He drinks a beer “once in a while.” As for wine, “only on Passover.”
He survived major heart surgery and licked prostate cancer. “I had good doctors,” he said, “who took good care of me.”
While making a house call last winter, he went up snow-covered steps that had no handrail. He slipped and fell and was bruised. He has told that patient: “If you get sick this winter, I’m coming in by way of your garage.”
The biggest blow he has suffered in his 100 years was the death of his wife of 60 years in 1998.
“She suffered from a brain tumor,” he said.
For the first time on this festive day, a trace of sadness appeared in his strong voice. He suffered, too. “I still miss her,” he said, looking toward a photo of “my Esther” on shelf by his desk.
“When she died, I had to go on,” he said, “I could not afford to feel sorry for myself. I had to be diverted by work.”
Fred Goldman decided to become a doctor right before graduating from Hughes High School — “ shortly before the dawn of time.”
He followed in the medical footsteps of older brother Leon Goldman, who became world-famous long before his death — in 1997 at the age of 91 — as the father of laser surgery.
“He founded (the University of Cincinnati’s) dermatology department. The laser made him famous all over,” the younger Goldman brother said. “He was a genius. I was never as good as he. I am just a doctor.”
He has no plan to stop.
“Work is life,” he said. “I work on demand. If there’s not much demand, there’s not much work. Fortunately, the demand exists. I feel I can still be helpful to people. And, I can still do the job. So, there’s no sense to consider retirement.”
He has not changed his approach to caring for his patients since he entered private practice in 1946.
“I am not the commander. I am not the boss,” he said. “We’re working together to help the patient.”
He spends “at least 30 minutes with each patient. I give them time. Sometimes, that’s the best medicine.”
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/12/18/100-year-olddoctorsexperiencestillputtowork.html
.. humble .. Fred has a good sense of humor, too .. two of the 'helps' to his happy old age .. these are good stories ..
After 70-plus years, centenarian still sees patients; some are 4th-generation
-----
Health Headlines [ 1 of 3 ]
Ohio could save and expand Medicaid, study says
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/public/2013/08/13/Ohio-Medicaid-hearing.html
-----
By Cliff Radel - THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER Sunday December 18, 2011 6:15 AM
Liz Dufour | THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER PHOTOS View Slideshow
Dr. Fred Goldman receives congratulations outside his Cincinnati office on his 100th birthday. The internist is the oldest licensed physician practicing medicine in Ohio. Four years ago, he cut back from five eight-hour days a week to three.
CINCINNATI — The 100-year-old doctor still makes house calls.
He must. That’s where the patients are.
“If they’re sick and can’t leave home,” Dr. Fred Goldman said, “I go to see them.”
They came to see him one day last week. Patients, friends and family members — some using walkers, some in strollers — gathered in numbers passing the century mark at the office he calls “ the dump” to throw a surprise birthday party for the internist who is the oldest licensed physician practicing medicine in Ohio.
“I almost had a heart attack seeing all of the people in the hall and the waiting room,” Goldman said between greeting well-wishers with a question about their health.
How’s your ankle?
You still smoking?
“People ask me, ‘Why do you go to a doctor who’s 100?’??” said Patti Levine, a fourth-generation patient of the doctor. “I tell them, ‘Because he’s seen it all, and he knows everything.’??”
The Blue Ash, Ohio, resident stood by a stroller holding her 10-month-old daughter, Madyson. “ She’s not his patient,” Levine said, “yet.”
Fellow physicians also gave birthday greetings to Goldman.
“He asked me to come work for him in 2007,” said 85-year-old Dr. Leo Wayne. That’s the year that Wayne retired and Goldman, at the age of 96, cut back from five eight-hour days a week to three.
“I told him I would not work for him,” Wayne said. “I’m too young.”
Would he prescribe retirement for his older friend and colleague?
“I would not dream of advising him to retire,” Wayne replied. “Dr. Goldman is an excellent diagnostician. He knows his patients, including himself. He knows this patient is still up to the task.”
As the birthday doctor worked the waiting room and the hallway, his guests peppered him with questions.
How does it feel to be 100?
He examined both of his hands. He squeezed one. Then, the other.
“Don’t feel anything different,” he said with a sly smile.
“Most people my age,” he added, “can’t feel anything. They’re dead.”
On Fred Goldman’s day of birth, Dec. 12, 1911, he arrived at his family’s home in Cincinnati’s West End.
“My mother — a housewife — was from Poland. My father — a shopkeeper — was from Russia,” he said, “and I was from both of them.”
“Want to see the rest of the dump?” he asked before leading visitors on a tour of his office. He sees 12 patients each workday in his computer-free suite. His schedule is set by hand by his sole employee, office manager Patti Heath.
“I came to work here when he was 91,” she said.
She thought she would be a short-timer. “Here I am nine years later. And he’s still going strong. The first year I worked for him, I collapsed on a beach for my vacation. He hiked the wilderness in Alaska and lived in a tent. They don’t make men like Fred Goldman anymore.”
Goldman married a red-haired farm-girl-turned-nurse named Esther Nelson in 1938 while he was teaching at the University of Texas. They had three sons.
Three years later, with America at war, the Goldmans returned to Cincinnati. He enlisted in the Navy.
He tried to gloss over his service in the Pacific. He mentioned in passing the names of five bloody battles: Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, Bougainville, New Guinea, Leyte Gulf.
Sometimes, he said matter-of-factly, he went to the front. Sometimes, the front came to him.
One of his three sons, Tom Goldman, an audiologist at Cincinnati’s Jewish Hospital, produced a copy of a citation signed by Adm. Chester Nimitz and awarded to Lt. Frederick M. Goldman, Medical Corps, “for meritorious service ... on numerous occasions when the camp was subjected to Japanese bombing and shelling attacks, he left the comparative safety of his foxhole and proceeded to the aid of injured personnel.”
Goldman shrugged his shoulders. “I saved some people,” he said with a wave of his hand. “That’s what I was supposed to do.”
A party guest asked the centenarian tour guide for his secret to a long life. The doctor looked around the room. He spoke in a whisper as if he were giving directions to the Fountain of Youth.
“I have no secrets,” he confided. “Haven’t a clue why I’ve lived this long. Maybe it’s because my office is a mess, and I keep saying I’m going to clean it up. That keeps me going. That, and it’s in my genes. My mother died at 91. So did one of my brothers. Another brother died in his 80s. So did my sister.”
He made a short list of his vices. He doesn’t exercise. “I keep moving. That’s my workout,” said the man who gave up cutting his grass two years ago. (He lives alone on a cattle farm in Bethel in Clermont County.) He stopped hiking the wilds of Alaska (“the place I love”) in 2007. That same year, he quit cleaning his gutters — “my balance was off. I still miss doing that.”
He “never” smoked cigarettes. He “rarely” smoked a pipe. He “temporarily” smoked a Cuban cigar after dinner, “but then (Fidel) Castro took over Cuba. When Cuba quit (being a free county), I quit smoking.” He has “no taste” for alcohol. He drinks a beer “once in a while.” As for wine, “only on Passover.”
He survived major heart surgery and licked prostate cancer. “I had good doctors,” he said, “who took good care of me.”
While making a house call last winter, he went up snow-covered steps that had no handrail. He slipped and fell and was bruised. He has told that patient: “If you get sick this winter, I’m coming in by way of your garage.”
The biggest blow he has suffered in his 100 years was the death of his wife of 60 years in 1998.
“She suffered from a brain tumor,” he said.
For the first time on this festive day, a trace of sadness appeared in his strong voice. He suffered, too. “I still miss her,” he said, looking toward a photo of “my Esther” on shelf by his desk.
“When she died, I had to go on,” he said, “I could not afford to feel sorry for myself. I had to be diverted by work.”
Fred Goldman decided to become a doctor right before graduating from Hughes High School — “ shortly before the dawn of time.”
He followed in the medical footsteps of older brother Leon Goldman, who became world-famous long before his death — in 1997 at the age of 91 — as the father of laser surgery.
“He founded (the University of Cincinnati’s) dermatology department. The laser made him famous all over,” the younger Goldman brother said. “He was a genius. I was never as good as he. I am just a doctor.”
He has no plan to stop.
“Work is life,” he said. “I work on demand. If there’s not much demand, there’s not much work. Fortunately, the demand exists. I feel I can still be helpful to people. And, I can still do the job. So, there’s no sense to consider retirement.”
He has not changed his approach to caring for his patients since he entered private practice in 1946.
“I am not the commander. I am not the boss,” he said. “We’re working together to help the patient.”
He spends “at least 30 minutes with each patient. I give them time. Sometimes, that’s the best medicine.”
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/12/18/100-year-olddoctorsexperiencestillputtowork.html
.. humble .. Fred has a good sense of humor, too .. two of the 'helps' to his happy old age .. these are good stories ..
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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