DR . WHO Russell Bird , MD by KATHRYN VANCE
“
That
’ s just what people did in Rochester , they worked for Kodak . If film photography was still around today , I would never have become a doctor .”
In the New York town situated on Lake Ontario , it was just a given that Dr . Russell Bird would one day follow in the footsteps of his mother , father and stepfather and work for the photography giant . By the end of the 1970s , Kodak employed more than 50,000 people in Rochester . However , as the 1980s began and the digital camera came into play , the scene began to shift . Dr . Bird knew a future at Kodak wasn ’ t in the cards for him .
After high school , he dabbled in various jobs and became a volunteer firefighter at 18 . He loved helping people , but also knew he wanted to pursue further education at some point . After a year at community college , he transferred to the University of Buffalo to major in biochemistry . This program was affiliated with the medical school and even had some integrated classes , so it was there that he got his first taste of medicine . After his junior year , he realized he wasn ’ t the best researcher ( and had an unfortunate experience accidentally flooding the lab ) and started reflecting on his firefighting and EMS days .
“ I thought back to the ER and the doctors working on patients and I knew that I needed to go to medical school . I wanted to
work with people , not test tubes .”
Around that time , he met his future wife , Leigh , and wooed her at a fireman ’ s carnival in upstate New York one summer . He remembers telling her the story of flooding the lab and is happy to say she dated and married him , even after hearing of that blunder .
He enrolled in the State University of New York ( SUNY ) at Syracuse for medical school in 1989 and was thoroughly enjoying being back to his passion of helping take care of people . In his fourth year , he did a rural medicine preceptorship in Oswego , New York for nine months as the sole medical student in the hospital . He essentially had a small practice of his own during that time with patients he ’ d see on a continuous basis . One patient in particular , a retired nurse they ’ d diagnosed with ovarian cancer , really helped him hone in on what he wanted to do in the future .
“ I started following her through her treatments , with oncology and the surgeons , and even scrubbed in on her surgery . At one point when she was post-op , she needed an NG tube put in . I ’ d never done it before , so she taught me how to do it . It was a very poignant experience . Here ’ s someone who ’ s suffering , and she was teaching me something . It was a learning experience for me , and I realized the impact I could make in family practice .”
After medical school , he moved to Lancaster , Pennsylvania to do his internship and residency at Lancaster General Hospital .
“ I liked that we had both an inner city and a rural popula-
26 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE