Dr James Gordon was the first neurologist to work full-time in country Australia but on Friday, after 36 years he will retire.
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Dr Gordon said although he’s looking forward to spending more time tending to his garden in Orange, travelling, seeing his four children more often, visiting family in North Queensland and playing golf, he has mixed feelings about retiring.
He said leaving his patients and closing Orange Neurology Centre, after a replacement could not be found in time, was a difficult decision.
His wife Dr Sharyn Pussell also retired on Friday, a week before her husband. Dr Pussell set up nuclear medicine at the Orange hospital in the 1980s and also worked in Dubbo but partially retired a few years ago.
Dr Gordon first came to Orange for 12 weeks in 1974 but started working as a neurologist in Orange in September 1981 and moved here and started his practice in 1982.
“I was the first full-time country-based neurologist in Australia. Before I did it, it was not considered that it was possible to practice neurology in the country,” he said.
“My wife and I are both specialists and we worked at Orange hospital as residents, we were encouraged by people like Dr Stuart Porges and Dr Huxtable.
“We could practice our specialties and have a family, we wouldn’t be able to do that in Sydney.”
He estimates that he’s seen more than 50,000 patients since coming to Orange and he been seeing his longest patient since 1981.
Before making the move to set up his practice Dr Gordon planned to play golf in Orange but didn’t play a game for the first two years due to his busy schedule which saw him booked out six weeks ahead in his first year, 20-hour days in five day weeks as well as being on call to the hospital on the other days.
Since he started, Dr Gordon has seen developments in genetics research, MRI and CT technology as well as the internet, which took away the need to spend thousands of dollars a year on textbooks.
However, he said the introduction of seat belt laws and drink-driver breathalyzers reduced over night the number of head trauma cases.
“I used to be called in one to two times a week for a head injury,” Dr Gordon said.
However that reduced to once a month after police started using breathalyzers on drivers.