JUNE 30, 2005
VOLUME 2 NO. 12
 

Athletic ophthalmologist a sight for sore eyes

Dr Doherty finds time for third world glaucoma patients
between marathons and rounds of golf


Would you trust a doctor who can't tell a boy from a girl? To his eternal dismay Dr Ed Doherty faced exactly that mortifying challenge as a young physician. A practising Catholic, he was asked by a devout attending nurse to perform a hasty baptism on a seriously ill newborn.

"In my haste," he recounted recently during a stint as a seannachie (pronounced shaughnessy), or storyteller, at the annual Irish Canadian Cultural Association gala dinner, "I looked at the small card on the incubator and saw the name John." He pauses, chagrined. "I immediately baptized the baby John, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. After the job was completed, I realized the baby was in fact a little girl and not a little boy. John was the name of the child's father."

When a local priest heard the story he recommended wryly that the greenhorn MD not quit his day job. "I decided to take his advice," Dr Doherty laughs. "Sometimes Father does know best." The Saint John, NB, physician has since switched to a more gender-neutral specialty: ophthalmology.

THIS SPORTING LIFE
Freed up from performing impromptu Catholic rites, the young doc was able to focus his extracurricular energies on sports. Sitting in his cosy but cluttered office in an uptown shopping centre in Saint John, the physician reflects that not being athletic wasn't really likely given his family. "Outdoor life was very important " he recalls, "you had to learn to swim, to fish, to bike. The whole family went everywhere together by bicycle. No excuses were accepted."

The doctor took that tough 'no excuses' philosophy to heart. As a nine-year-old, he was in a car accident and sustained a spinal cord injury. The accident left him walking with the aid of crutches so he simply chose sports that rely on upper body strength — "Skiing, swimming, sailing, hand-cycling, kayaking, scuba-diving, golfing — salmon fishing — I think that's all," he laughs.

Sport isn't mere recreation, it's in his blood. "I like the talk around locker rooms — around the golf course. I like the camaraderie of sports," he says enthusiastically, and then gets reflective. "I guess all of it has to do with the interaction of people, and listening to people, hearing their stories."

MARATHON MAN
For the past five summers, Dr Doherty and his hand-cycle have entered the Saint John Marathon-by-the-Sea, and in the fall of 2000 he travelled back to the motherland to compete in the Dublin Marathon to raise money for the arthritis charity Joints in Motion. Despite not being on his home turf, Dr Doherty did the Saint John Irish community proud by winning the hand-cycle division.

His longtime friend Dr Norm Garey wasn't surprised by the victory. "Ed does a lot of things, and does them all well," says the pediatrician. Dr Garey and Dr Doherty's 20-year friendship is built on a mutual love of sports — as well as a good joke. "Ed loves to laugh," he says. "When things get too serious, he can always see the funny side." The two have sailed down the Caribbean together, but these days see each other mostly on the golf course.

Dr Doherty's medical and sporting lives even converged for a while. Between 1994 and 2003 he acted as the consulting eye physician for the Saint John Flames, the farm team for the Calgary Flames. But since the team got transferred to Omaha he's been contenting himself with peering into non-sporting eyes.

DOMINICAN EYES ARE SMILING
Among them are the eyes of some physician-starved ophthalmology patients from the Caribbean island of Dominica. Every year, Dr Doherty and Dr John McNicholas, a fellow ophthalmologist from Newfoundland, head to the island as part of the Dominica Eye Project. The two of them spend 10 days detecting and treating glaucoma, performing operations, and drumming up funding and medical supplies under the auspices of Rotary International.

The list of good causes he's been involved with include the St Joseph's Hospital Foundation, the Board of the New Brunswick Museum, the Board of Governors of the University of New Brunswick, Amnesty International, Doctors Without Borders and L'Arche. He's especially pleased about a daycare centre for teenage mothers he helped launch with the Saint John Business Community Anti-Poverty Initiative, a coalition of local business leaders and professionals, at a local school.

Dr Doherty's good works haven't gone unnoticed. He received the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003 for contributions to the community, and the Red Triangle Award from the YMCA for the same reason. He says he's grateful for these awards, but seems a bit uncomfortable about them, maintaining that so many "unsung heroes" never get any awards, because they're given to people like him who have a higher profile in the community.

When I ask him what drives him to participate in so much, Dr Doherty says it has to do with being mentally and physically balanced. "I love challenges, I love physical activity," he says fervently. "When I'm in very good physical shape, then intellectually I'm much sharper." It also has to do with something much more basic, perhaps a result of surviving that bad car crash as a child. "I love life," he declares, "and I'm very grateful for the opportunities it's presented to me."

The "radiant optimist," as Dr Garey calls him, is constantly finding more ways to capitalize on that vitality. In the last federal election he narrowly missed getting the Liberal nomination for Saint John, but says his "true Irish" passion for politics may send him back for another try next time round.

 

 

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