|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Traveling StethescopeIt's have black bag, will travel for one Baylor graduate
By Charis Boylan
Bill Ogg's medical career has been a lifelong adventure. It has taken
him from an authentic Mardis Gras spent in New Orleans to the
desert-enveloped land of Kuwait. Throughout his lifetime, Ogg '54 has
managed to work three very different careers within the medical field.
But it's the third and final phase of his career that has been the most
unusual--and the most fun.
For the last fifteen years, Ogg has served as an independent contractor by filling in for doctors who have taken leave or
for medical offices that are waiting for more staffing. He has filled
thirty-two separate transitory assignments, most of which have taken he
and his wife, Luanne Wade Ogg '55 (pictured with her husband), far from
their home in Florida. Each assignment has differed in length, from one
week to eighteen months. "We've been a team. I consider myself
extremely blessed with the ability to enjoy a rewarding and adventurous
medical journey with my wife at my side," Ogg says.
It isn't hard to imagine people as sincere and endearing as the Oggs
adjusting so easily to a variety of living situations. With his
unassuming ease and charming sense of humor, Ogg is the type of man who
makes friends with everyone.
Together, the Oggs adjusted to celebrating church on a Friday during a
year-and-a-half assignment in Kuwait. There they visited pyramids,
Egyptian museums, and the metropolitan city of Dubai. "We had a chance
to see Kuwait City right after the damage of the Gulf War," Ogg says.
Ogg's most precarious adjustments were two separate assignments in
Barrow, Alaska's northernmost community, located on the Arctic Ocean in
polar bear country. According to Ogg, Barrow is "the North Pole
itself." They adjusted to twenty-four hours of sunlight in the summer
and continual darkness in the winter.
For Thanksgiving, they tasted frozen raw bowhead whale meat and spent
evenings tracing the Northern Lights. They visited Mount McKinley's
abundant wildlife and saw the Alaskan Pipeline. "It's those times," Ogg
says, "that are now treasured memories."
In 2000, Ogg made the trek down to Australia. He worked two different
assignments there, one in Queensland with an aboriginal clinic and one
in Victoria. "We saw koalas, kangaroos, and the duck-billed platypus in
its natural river habitat," he says. "It was fascinating!" They spent
their wedding anniversary snorkeling off of the Great Barrier Reef and
traveled to New Zealand, Asia, and all over Australia before they made
the journey home.
In the lower forty-eight, Ogg worked in community health clinics in
Washington State for farm workers. He served several times in Indian
health clinics in Oklahoma, New Mexico, Montana, and North Dakota. He
also worked on military bases in North Carolina, Kentucky, and
Louisiana and particularly enjoyed a summer working at the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point, New York. After agreeing to a
cruise-ship assignment, Ogg describes the nightmare of the
hurricane-ruined trip and an endless stream of seasick patients. "One
cruise contract is enough!" he declares.
All of these travel opportunities, Ogg says, fulfill part of a lifelong
dream to serve as a medical doctor in the mission field. After
graduating from Baylor, where he served as a bear trainer and earned
degrees in chemistry and Bible, Ogg postponed his mission plans to
spend a few years in medical practice to earn firsthand experience.
He and his wife moved to Washington State upon the urging of a friend
who was pastor of a church there. During Ogg's twelve years in
Washington, he worked at a small clinic, enjoyed a solo medical
practice in several small communities, and completed two years of
general surgery residency and emergency medicine. In addition, he spent
six weeks in Ethiopia, where he relieved a missionary surgeon. Ogg
calls this period his "first" medical career.
In 1976, Ogg accepted an assignment from the U.S. Air Force on the
eastern coast of Florida. During his twenty-year military medical
career, he spent time in Korea and Germany. He retired from the Air
Force in 1994, and ended his second medical career.
With a wide variety of memories and photos to show for his time, Ogg
celebrated his fiftieth year in medicine in 2008. As the commitments
for independent contractor assignments grow longer, Ogg is finally
considering retirement.
But don't think that he is quitting medicine altogether. "Naturally,
I'll still be on call for any medical questions from Luanne, and any of
my five children and six grandchildren," he says.
With his medical licenses and board certification still current,
however, the future may hold still more adventures for the Oggs.
|
|
|
|
|
.jpg)
