Find out more about my winding journey from medicine, music, and martial arts across jungles and continents.

I was born and mostly raised in Birmingham, Alabama. I learned to play soccer at Indian Spring School, and continued to play at the University of Michigan and later (I confess illegally) for the University of Alabama, then many teams thereafter until a knee injury ended that career.

I studied zoology at the University of Michigan, but persuaded myself it would be fun to take courses in advanced calculus, biochemistry, physical chemistry, nuclear physics, and quantum mechanics. During those teenage years, I canoed through the Boundary Waters in Ontario, worked as a wrangler on Young Life ranches in Colorado, and wound up attending the Woodstock Music Festival in New York. I practiced judo for a year in college, and to this day, I still know how to fall.

I then switched to karate in medical school earning my black belt and frequent trips to the emergency room for xrays during my final scholastic year at the University of Alabama School of Medicine. During a tryout with the Birmingham Civic Chorus, I was promoted from baritone to tenor, and we sang Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.

I returned to Ann Arbor in 1975 as a house officer in Internal Medicine, and three months into those rotations was involved in the search for a serial killer in the Ann Arbor VA Hospital.
At the end of 3 years I moved back to Birmingham and studied endocrinology, and subsequently moved to England for six-months to attend the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Then it was back to Birmingham, Alabama to begin my fellowship in infectious diseases, with a three-month hiatus to conduct field work in the Jungles of Bahia, Brazil. Anyone interested in reading about that adventure can find the write-ups in the Dispatches section of the online Wilderness Medicine Magazine.

Eventually, I recognized the need to earn a living and began private practice in Bessemer, Alabama, as an Infectious Disease consultant, which is where I still practice.

I was pressed into service in the spring of 2011, emergently as a physician on scene in Tuscaloosa after the F5 tornado devastated that city.

Additional interests include scuba diving, guitar (you can find me on YouTube as guitardoc), raising tropical fish, reading, lifting weights (my original instructor was the real-life counterpart to the character Arnold Schwarzenegger played in the movie Stay Hungry), and travel. I had to drop archery when the shoulders objected, and was frankly lousy at snow skiing- although that attempt did result in a great Most-Embarrassing-Moment story.

My proudest achievement is raising my two children from their infancy as a single parent.

My son and daughter are my best friends and travel companions. I have been blessed with a fantastic extended family, great friends, exceptional coworkers, and wonderfully loyal patients.

God is good.