Personal
I grew up in New England although my parents have spent most of my life as teachers in Switzerland. I am a diehard Bruins, Celtics, Red Sox and New England Patriots’ fan, but because I took the Hippocratic Oath, I do take care of people who support New York teams. When my three boys were younger, I coached many of their soccer, hockey and baseball teams which remains one of the great joys of my life. Two of the boys still play lacrosse competitively and I rarely miss a game. And yes, I do note that the sport my boys continue to play is a sport that I did not coach them in.
I loved gardening with my parents when I was a boy, and I worked on farms in England and Switzerland as a young man. With my wife Margaret, and our three boys, we have a small farm where we raise many of our own vegetables and have chickens and bees. As soon as I finish repairing the fencing, we will again have sheep and steer; Margaret and I are negotiating over pigs. I once made the mistake of buying piglets as an anniversary present, so pigs are a bit of a sensitive subject in our marriage. My gardening claim to fame was once growing the largest giant pumpkin at the Tunbridge World’s Fair.
One of my hobbies is making maple syrup and 2024 was a great year, so we have had lots of syrup to give away to family and friends. We press cider from our apples and are building a mountain bike/cross country ski trail in our woods. I have made efforts to turn both the maple syrup and the cider into “adult beverages,” but without much palatable success. I love to learn from other people’s homestead adventures so please share freely.
Professional
I became interested in becoming a physician while in East Africa in 1983. At the time, I was studying political science but wanted to have more concrete skills to be able to engage with different cultures as both a giver and a receiver; I wanted to be both a learner and a teacher. It is being of service to others that brings me joy.
I did not get married until age 39, and we started our family when I was 40. I used those years before family responsibilities to study and train as a physician and surgeon. In 1992 I was one of the early USA based physicians to volunteer for Doctors Without Borders (MSF). I worked in refugee camps in Bangladesh with Rohingya people forced out of Myanmar. I encountered outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria and had a glimpse of the uncertain world before vaccines. For most of 1993, I led the MSF program in Tuzla, Bosnia, during the ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian war. I basically ran a supply operation to the front-line field hospitals. I returned to Bosnia briefly in 1994 and 1995, and in 1999 I did an MSF stint in Macedonia caring for refugees from Kosovo.
For about a decade, beginning in 1998 I traveled regularly to the Western Province of Zambia to perform urological surgery and collaborate with the rural health care teams. As our family grew, I traveled less, instead focusing on being a husband, dad and community urologist. I did not do any more international medical work until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and my youngest son was 15. Thanks to support from my family, I traveled to Ukraine in April 2022 as part of a surgical team with the group Global Response Medicine.
Dr. Curtis (left) operating in Mykolaiv, Ukraine in April 2022
