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Jan 11, 2009

"Dedicate some of your life to others. Your dedication will not be a sacrifice. It will be an exhilarating experience because it is an intense effort applied toward a meaningful end." --Dr Thomas Dooley

A Lifetime of House Calls

In the sleepy country town of Yoakum, Texas everyone knows Doc Watson. Over the last 50 years, the tall and lanky family practitioner delivered a good many of the town's residents and doctored most of the others. The night Janet Jaco's little girl had to be rushed to the hospital with a sudden hemorrhage, David Watson walked the four blocks from his house to the Yoakum Community Hospital every hour on the hour to check on his patient and offer a comforting shoulder to her worried mother. The night the hospital urgently needed blood for an obstetrics patient, Watson rushed down from his office to donate some of his O-negative, then stayed to call in other townspeople with the right blood type. (He knew who they were.) Last month Watson received the Country Doctor of the Year award, which honors a primary care physician who best exemplifies the spirit of rural practitioners.