A woman at Dr. Roderick Yip’s memorial service last month asked
me how I happened to know the good doctor.
”
He was the first person I ever met,
”
I told her.
A woman at Dr. Roderick Yip’s memorial service last month asked me how I happened to know the good doctor. “He was the first person I ever met,” I told her.
The nice lady’s face looked puzzled for about 10 seconds, then she figured it. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “He was the doctor at your birth.”
“That’s what my mom said,” I replied. “I don’t really remember our initial moment of introduction.”
I learned about Dr. Yip’s passing from a Morgan Hill Times obituary. The news hit me hard. Reading the notice of his death at age 81, I couldn’t help but think this man was the first person who had ever seen me as I made my short but important journey from the womb to the world. He was also the first person who ever touched and held that newborn me.
Dr. Yip had been a friend of my family during my Hollister growing-up years. He and my dad had a common passion for playing the violin, and I remember the two often performed duets together in our home’s living room or at church recitals.
I also remember at Christmas every year how he and his wife, Margaret, would give our family a book from a series called “Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories.” The children’s books contained little stories with life lessons. These gifts proved Dr. Yip cared about his patients’ moral maintenance as much as he cared for their physical well-being.
Because he had played such an important role in my own personal history, I felt obliged to attend Dr. Yip’s memorial service held Dec. 16 at the Hollister Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Entering the chapel, I saw a photo of Dr. Yip’s smiling face projected on a screen. Perhaps it had been the same kind of grin he smiled when he assisted me into this world, I thought.
As the chapel filled up, I noticed his children: Dolly, Linda, Cherie and Raymond.
I recalled playing board games with them at their home or swimming in their pool.
I’d forgotten those fun times. Funny how old memories hit you at a memorial service.
Raymond Yip, a medical doctor himself now in Chico, gave a eulogy.
His words painted an amazing picture of his dad as a man with fine sense of humor, an artist with a master skill at drawing portraits, an amateur astronomer who built his own telescope – even grinding the lens to perfection – an author of a book about the biblical Daniel, and a violinist who cared so deeply for the instrument that he crafted his own fiddles.
Roderick Yip was with no doubt a South Valley Renaissance man.
Sitting there listening to the words of the South Valley residents who remembered him, I kept pondering about what it meant to be a good doctor.
That title comes with an awesome responsibility. Unfortunately, too many physicians forget that their patients are flesh and blood people with fears and worries about their health.
IÂ experienced this several years ago with a doctor in Morgan Hill I visited for a basic health checkup. I had sat in a cold room in only my underwear for at least half an hour waiting for the physician.
He swung open the door and without even looking at me demanded: “OK, what’s the problem?”
I’d never met the doctor before, but from this rather rude introduction, I definitely felt bad vibes about him.
The conversation only grew worse. I’d told him there was no problem.
I said I hadn’t had a physical checkup in five years and I thought it was probably a good idea to get one.
“Why?” he asked in an extremely annoyed tone.
I felt astounded by the question. “I’ve always been told everyone should have a checkup at least once a year,” I told him.
Well, he gave me a quick looking over, but I could see his heart wasn’t in it. He just went through the motions. From that negative experience, I decided never to set foot in his medical office again.
I hope someday that arrogant doctor might somehow develop the human touch that Dr. Yip gave all his patients.
If that Morgan Hill doctor is now reading this, I’d like for him to get out of this column an important message.
These words don’t come from me but from Felix Marti-Ibanez who wrote an excellent essay titled “To Be a Doctor.”
In it, he says: “To be a doctor means much more than to dispense pills or to patch up or repair torn flesh and shattered minds.
To be a doctor is to be an intermediary between man and God.”
Every doctor must have the medical knowledge and professional skills he or she can get only from years of training, of course.
But there’s something more they must possess if they’re going to be a good doctor.
They need a special quality of the heart. They need to have a compassion, an empathy, a friendly manner, an approachable style, a sensitivity, a zestfulness for life, good listening skills and an honest and respectful concern for their patients.
Most of all, good doctors have a humanity that makes them trustworthy. They are able to connect with their patients as one human being to another.
Although I’m certain he was not a perfect person as no one in this world is, Dr. Yip did somehow manage to demonstrate these excellent qualities.
And I have no doubt there are many other good doctors in the South Valley region who also show them every day with their patients.
These traits of humanity must not be confined to just doctors but all professions.
Our world would be a much better place if we could all heed the words of perhaps the greatest physician of all, a healer who walked in Galilee long ago and once told folks to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Those words were lived daily by the first man I ever met.
Martin Cheek is the author of ‘The Silicon Valley Handbook.’ His column runs every Saturday in the Gilroy Dispatch and Hollister Free Lance and every Tuesday in the Morgan Hill Times. He can be reached at ma**********@***il.com.
