HEREABOUTS virginia burroughs
This time next week, popular Harrison Twp. family physician Mary Lou Zwiesler will be in her new position at the University of Dayton’s Student Health Center. Her last day at PriMed Woodbury Family Practice will be Wednesday, Aug. 25, and she’ll start work at UD on the 26.
“I’ll be part-time, the third doctor on staff there,” she said. “It will be a lifestyle change for me, and I’ll have more time for my garden, cooking, knitting, my husband — and I’ll be able to play our piano again, which needs tuning and playing.”
A Cleveland native, Zwiesler came to Dayton to attend UD, where she met her husband, Jerry, a native Daytonian. She went to medical school at Wright State University, completed her residency at St. Elizabeth and started in practice in Aug. 1989.
I was always interested in math and science,” she recalls, noting that her father was an engineer and her mother a teacher. “My dad showed me how to use a slide rule at 9, and when I was 10, all I wanted for Christmas was a microscope — no dolls — and I got one.”
During her 25 years in private practice, Zwiesler has seen many advances in the field of medicine. “I love learning, and putting new information into practice has been very rewarding.”
The lowest point in her career came “when I had to tell a colleague that she had metastatic cancer — that was a rough day,” she recalls. “Giving bad news is always difficult. I like making those little differences like helping patients with poison ivy, high blood pressure or diabetes.”
Zwiesler, who has a patient panel of almost 1,800, says that “a lot of patients have been coming in for that last visit” since receiving the letter about her leaving the North Main Street practice.
“In bidding farewell to my patients, I’ve done a lot of review as they reminded me of things that I had forgotten. There have been a lot of notes and hugs, and I’ve been feeling a lot of love from my patients.”
A most touching farewell came from a patient in hospice. “On a Monday, she dictated a note to send to me with a planter. I received it on Tuesday, and called to thank her. Her daughter answered and said she was in a coma; she died that Wednesday. I can’t describe the feeling of knowing that one of the last pieces of work she did in her life was to send me a note.”
Some of her young patients are students at UD, so she may be seeing them in her new setting.
The 58-year-old says, “I’ll be done with the long hours, but I’m not done thinking. I love the intellectual challenges of medicine and the relationships with patients. I love learning and people — what better combination of the two than medicine is there?”
Contact this columnist at virgburroughs@gmail.com.