KELLY PRICE

Arland Adams understands the problems and empathizes with many of the symptoms of the patients in his internal medicine practice, which is limited to a geriatric population.

He speaks their language — it’s his own age group.

Now 80, Adams is in his office every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, attending to his patients, who are also his contemporaries.

He has seen an amazing change in the practice of medicine in the last half century—Medicare and other government interventions, changes in therapies and procedures. Yet his philosophy remains the same: “It’s often more important to know what sort of patient has a disease than to know what sort of disease a patient has.”

Now that he has cut back on his practice (he no longer visits nursing homes or makes hospital rounds where he was the “oldest man at the hospital”), he enjoys a luxury usually denied to many of his younger colleagues: time. He uses a lot of this “free” time at the library reading the latest journals and medical articles “to try to keep up,” he joked.

He admits that a plethora of copies of interesting and pertinent articles have overflowed into an ocean of information stacked in his office, but he remains confident that he will get around to reading it all. But then, of course, there will be more, so he doesn’t expect to get ahead.

His primary treatment advice to his patients is to “keep them on their feet,” and he urges them to stay active by doing as much as they can. Of course, he also counsels them to watch their blood pressure, diet, and blood sugar levels, but firmly believes that activity is one of the best medicines to keep seniors going.

He practices what he preaches, and frequently enjoys a round of golf. One advantage to golf, in addition to enjoying the physical exercise and savoring the fresh air, is that it demands keeping your mind on the game and off anything else. He has always enjoyed sports, going back to the days when he was better known as “Ace” and captured the Middle Atlantic Collegiate Wrestling Championship after four years of undefeated varsity wrestling on the Muhlenberg College team.

Adams grew up in a small town in eastern Pennsylvania just north of Hershey, and still carries a trace of a Pennsylvania Dutch inflection in dialogue that years in Florida have mellowed but not erased.

A naval aviator with the rank of Lt. Commander, he served at the Naval Hospital of Philadelphia after graduation from Jefferson Medical College.

He was a naval aviator during the Korean War and finished his naval career at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Pensacola before going into private practice in the Indialantic area for 30 years. He practices at the Osler Medical Group in Melbourne and is doctor emeritus at Holmes Regional Medical Center.

Adams said he thought about retiring about 12 years ago but, as the time got closer, he decided that he really enjoyed what he was doing so much that he decided to keep practicing, particularly since he could still help people and do something that he still found to be “interesting.”

He thinks perhaps if he hadn’t found his calling in medicine, he would have enjoyed being a farmer or becoming one post-retirement, except that Helenmary, his wife of 40 years, might not want to give up being a “city girl.”

One of the advantages of practicing medicine for so long is that time has reinforced his assertion that prevention is the most important medical tenet or treatment to help a patient. An ounce of prevention is more effective than a cure for medical problems, no matter what age a person is, but especially in geriatric patients.



December 2007