August 2, 2007

Editorial

Time to thank a good doctor

I’d like to apologize in advance to Dr. Louis Schwab for embarrassing him, which this piece surely will. A modest man who lives in Yellow Springs but had a practice in Xenia, he gently rebuffed my requests, over the years, to write a story about him. He was my daughter’s pediatrician as she grew up and he struck me then as a local treasure, a courtly, shy and extremely kind man who took such good care of his small patients and their families.

I’d also like to apologize for calling him that cold winter night, 20 years ago, at 3 a.m. when my baby wouldn’t stop crying. Oh, and it wasn’t just any night — it was Christmas Eve. I’ll never forget the sound of his voice on the other end of the phone, calm and gentle and not the least bit annoyed, as though calling one’s doctor in the dead of Christmas Eve night were a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I forget exactly what he suggested then, but it worked. More important than any medicine, of course, was knowing he was there on the other end of a telephone, willing to help, even on Christmas Eve.

I suspect that the moms and dads of all of Dr. Schwab’s patients believed he was there for them, walking with them in the amazing and sometimes frightening journey of raising a child. I wonder if he knew how much his gentle presence on the journey meant to us, and how much we valued his calm belief that everything would turn out all right.

Much of what some would consider impressive about Dr. Schwab wasn’t obvious. I didn’t know he received his medical degree from Harvard, and his pre-med at Princeton. I didn’t know that, at age 66, he had just returned to private practice after many years as medical director at Children’s Medical Center of Dayton, because he missed being a hands-on doctor.

What I knew was that his slightly shabby office in Xenia was always packed with kids, many of whose parents looked like they might not be able to pay their bills. I knew that in the noise and chaos of all those kids, many with runny noses, he seemed engaged and content. And I knew that while we often had to wait, that was okay because when it was our turn, Dr. Schwab would have all the time in the world.

We often don’t have the opportunity to thank people who have helped us along our way, but friends and patients of Dr. Schwab can thank him this Saturday, Aug. 4, at 2:30 p.m., at a reception at Friends Care Community. I’d like to thank him for taking good care of my daughter. I’d like to thank him for, in a world in which health care is increasingly profit-oriented and dehumanized, waging a one-man campaign for kindness and decency. And I thank him for the house calls, which were free.

—Diane Chiddister