A Distinguished Career

If your doctor was retiring would you cry?  Would you give him a personalized gift at a substantial expense?   Would you write him a letter telling him how much he helped make your life what it is today and enclose pictures of your happy healthy family?  No? Me neither.  Dr. C Joe Ottinger is retiring after 39 years, and that is exactly what his patients did for him.  Actually I am not surprised.  If I had a doctor like him I might do the same.  However, doctors like Joe are few and far between.

What makes Dr. Ottinger different?  He spends time with his patients.  He can tell you personal stories about his long time patients because he listens and he cares.  He does what it takes to help them.  It's not a 9-5 for him.  He goes in and sees patients on his days off or after working hours.  He is accessible.  He treats his nurse as a partner.  He respects his staff and appreciates what they do.  Those are just a few of the things I can come up with off the top of my head.  If I really sat and thought about it you would be reading for a very long time.

I know him as a doctor and just a regular guy, and both are the same.  He is not pretentious by any stretch of the imagination.  No one has been hired to replace him (not that they could).  Ft. Wayne will be sorely lacking in the area of pediatric neurology.  It's really pretty sad that the quality of care he provided to this town is gone.  You talk to almost any person who has a child with neurological problems here in town and they will have seen Dr. O.  Then they will tell you how wonderful he is; how much he help them and their child.

I may be a little biased since I am married to him.  However, I'm not telling you anything I haven't heard personally from the source or seen first hand.  It's just the facts.  I met Joe when I was a nurse at the Rehab hospital.  That was my first job as a nurse so I was pretty green.  He never made me feel that way unlike some other doctors who shall remain nameless who were total assholes!  Most of the time when you call a physician on the phone or have to talk to them in person they can be intimidating (it's an ego thing).  Dr. O was never like that.  He let you say what you had to say and then it was discussed.   He is a good person first and that is what makes him a good doctor.  That is why I was drawn to him.  I asked him out and he turned me down (he was seeing someone else).  That integrity made him even more attractive.

I've only been around him for the last 15 years or so of his career, but I've seen him; on call, woken up in the middle of the night requesting orders for ibuprofen, working late, working on days off, dealing with crazy people, dealing with medical politics, etc, etc.  Through it all, the things that mattered most to him were the people he worked with and his patients.

Every thing I have written is the absolute truth.  Joe however is not perfect....when it comes to doctoring his family that is.  It's the hazard of any profession.  Carpenters houses usually need repair. Hair dressers have the messiest hair.  Chefs bring their family take out.....Well, the Ottinger family is lucky to be alive.  His daughter Julie calling him from college after burning herself is told to put aloe on it.  He finds out later she has 3rd degree burns.  His other favorite remedy was to lay on your left side.  It doesn't matter what is wrong with you, just lay on your left side (it helps to dispel gas).  I personally had a few close calls met with apathy.  I was overcome with toxic fumes and he took me outside and patted me on the head.  I burnt myself with a glue gun on the nail bed and had a vagal response where I almost passed out and my heart rate dropped into the 40's.  He asked me what I was doing on the floor.  I suffered with poison ivy for 2 weeks before he offered to get me a medrol dose pack.  "Really, that's an option and it took 2 weeks for you to tell me that!?"  Those were dark times, but we survived.  The thing is none of those situations were real emergencies and it takes a good doctor to know the difference.  We like to give him a hard time about those instances, but if it was a true crisis I wouldn't want anyone else by my side.

Joe deserves all the accolades.  He also deserves to enjoy his retirement.  Cheers to you Dr. Ottinger!!