Dr. Robert Wheaton’s career included house calls, surgeries and delivering babies
By Ed Nadolski
Editor in Chief
Dr. Robert Wheaton was the quintessential community physician.
According to his son, he’d operate on patients in the morning – tonsillectomies and gall bladder removals were common – and then work in some hospital rounds before seeing patients in his office throughout the afternoon. Family time in the evening was often interrupted by a house call or baby delivery.
And, if he was at the hospital late, he’d often sleep there to be ready for surgery at 7 the next morning.
Wheaton, who maintained a general practice in Burlington for 41 years, died Sunday at the age of 88. He was two months shy of his 89th birthday.
“I remember getting in the Corvair with him and running out to a farmhouse for a house call,” his son, Dr. Doug Wheaton, of Detroit, said.
Once at the home, he recalls his father treating a woman who was likely suffering congestive heart problems with diuretic medication from his well-stocked bag. After using the bathroom, the woman returned to serve coffee to the doctor and a piece of pie to his son at the kitchen table.
“Those general guys were always on,” Doug Wheaton said of his father’s practice. “When you came out (of medical school) in the ‘50s, you were certified to do everything.”
And while Doug Wheaton – who is an emergency department physician at St. John Hospital and Medical Center in Detroit – is well aware of the improvements in science and medical technique in recent decades, he said today’s doctors are hard-pressed to replicate the level of dedication, compassion and comprehensive care his father and other doctors of his generation displayed.
“They were a very hearty lot,” Doug Wheaton said.
Robert Wheaton died in hospice with his family gathered around at the same hospital – now Aurora Memorial Hospital of Burlington – he served for those 41 years.
Doug Wheaton said his father had been in declining health the past two years – suffering from a pulmonary embolism and recovering from hip and knee replacement surgeries.
However, he said, his father was hopeful for a return to the golf course this spring until further respiratory problems cropped up in recent weeks.
“If you live to 89 and 87 of them are healthy, you’ve had a good life,” Doug Wheaton said.
To read the full story, see the March 22 edition of the Burlington Standard Press.
-
-
-
-
-