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A note written on the 22nd day of my retirement, January 22, 2019
A Physician in heart for 53 years
Today, I have experienced the movie Doctor Zhivago again. This movie was released in December, 1965, only four months after Carolyn and I Mattie’s. We saw the movie in the spring of 1967, after we moved to Waco, Texas, where I began graduate school at Baylor University in September, 1966.
A number of experiences that year stirred in me again the idea of going to medical school. Through the fall of 1967 and 1968, I worked full time and took premed courses at Baylor. On November 22, 1968, I received my acceptance letter to the September, 1969 class at UT Health San Antonio Long School Of Medicine.
Today, Tuesday, January 22, 2019, I am in my 22nd day of retirement from a life-long career of practicing medicine. As I listen to the music of the movie, I relive those formative years when Carolyn and I made such life-changing decisions.
For these three weeks, I have renewed my exercise program: 2 miles a day on an indoor track with my speed increasing daily, 100 arm curls with twenty pounds in each hand, 100 leg lifts with 210 pounds.
I am grateful to have lived the life that we have. I am grateful that we served others as we did. I regret having allowed, so much as it was within my power to effect events, the outcome which resulted in my retirement. I still long to practice medicine and to help others, but that may prove impossible.
I am looking into renewing my study of French which I suspended in 1964. Surely my life of medicine is not over. We shall see.
I am grateful to have a life partner of 57 years — 53 years 6 months married. Daily, we are finding new joy in being, as we were in our first year of marriage, never apart.
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