Our Practice

 

In June 2009, I attended the annual meeting of all the skin specialists (dermatologists) in Canada.  Dr. William Danby, a very respected dermatologist stood up at one of the conferences and said, “recently because I am so busy, 2 of my patients waited a very long time to see me and instead of diagnosing malignant melanoma on day 1, I diagnosed it on day 61.”

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Prime Minister, Lester B. Pearson, Robert Boursassa, Premier of Quebec, Bob Marley, Jamaican singer and recently Stuart McLean, CBC radio host and award-winning humorist died of malignant melanoma.

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In February 2017, when I returned home, I spoke with my wife, Joan and office manager, Edith and said “Only a few years left, would you help me to run a drop-in practice so we can diagnose cancer and other conditions, without making the patients wait?” We are open six days a week and see patients the same day. We are open Saturday morning from 4 a.m. to 9 a.m. We chose these hours on Saturday for several reasons: people coming from out of town will not have trouble with Toronto traffic, we try to finish before 10 a.m. so our neighbours are not bothered by the parked cars, etc.

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I only have 5% of my hearing. In some frequencies, I have a 120 decibel loss. My staff take the histories and I dictate the patients’ physical examination findings, since I depend on lip reading to communicate. Our patients are informed of my deafness and the copy of my audiogram is in each room. Our patients are very kind and co-operative. We try to focus on the skin problems and stay away from “small talk”.

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When we started ten years ago, Joan and I would get up at 3 a.m. on Saturdays and the next two days, we would wake up at 3 a.m. Together we decided to get up at 3:15 a.m. seven days per week. We go to bed at 8 p.m. daily.

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I am very grateful to our office manager, Edith, who is an exceptionally gifted person. We have an excellent staff. It takes ten of us to handle the office on Saturday mornings. During the week, our staff is six to seven people.

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Our main mission is to help people with their skin problems and diagnose cancer as early as possible.

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Our master, Jesus, set an example of service when he washed his disciples’ feet. We are trying to be servants and any good we do, we give “Glory to God”.

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Sincerely,

Andrew A. Simone

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