THE QUINTESSENTIAL PHYSICIAN: Sidney Daffin, M.D.
BY JAMES T. COOK, III, M.D. PHOTOGRAPHY BY TIFFANI DANIELLE CASCADDEN
Among physicians, there are some who rise above the others in their compassion, their expertise, their industry, and in their respect by their peers. These are awarded another less formal title by their fellow physicians as the seldom seen “R.D.” or Real Doctor. This is a physician who takes his call in turn without complaint, toils on weekends and holidays, sees patients without regard to their ability to pay, and is commonly seen in the Emergency Room at 2 a.m., taking care of his patients, time after time. Such a physician is Dr. Sidney A. Daffin, III, of this community who, in his eighth decade, still operates an office practice and sees indigents at St. Andrews Medical Clinic for three hours every other Wednesday evening.
When I first arrived in Panama City in 1977, Bay Medical Center was still Bay Memorial, a county-owned hospital with a fraction of the beds and physicians it has today. One evening, while working in the close quarters of the Emergency Room with my colleague, I needed counter space to write orders, but Dr. Daffin’s black doctor’s bag was in the way. It was a small bag but, when I tried to move it to one side, it would not budge. It turned out he kept weights in the bottom of it for isometric exercise throughout the day, to keep him strong for water skiing and wakeboarding. Now in his eighties, he still water skis in beautiful Watson Bayou, and he still practices medicine with the same diligence and dedication.
Following medical training and service in the U.S. Army, Sid returned to practice medicine in his childhood home town of Panama City in 1969, joining two wonderful internists with excellent training, Dr. John Fishel and Dr. Owen Reese, and together they practiced the gamut of medicine from their Harrison Avenue office. As internists, they treated all the renal, pulmonary, cardiology, endocrine, gastroenterology, hematology, oncology, and infectious disease cases as reflected in their training, as Bay County lacked subspecialists. If a patient had bypass surgery, the internists saw the heart patients in follow up. If a patient had cancer, the doctors administered the chemotherapy by published protocol. And so it went for each group of ill patients. Dr. Daffin remembers that the charge for an office visit in that era was eight dollars. Today, even with ever-increasing medical costs, insurance companies pay only a fraction of an internist’s actual charges.
In addition to their office practice, Doctors Fishel, Reese and Daffin participated in a free clinic in the Bay Memorial Emergency Room organized by general surgeon Dr. Joe Morris. They also had to cover medical calls in the Bay and later Gulf Coast Emergency Room as this was well before ER physicians could be hired to work shifts to staff the ER. Each doctor took ER call a couple of times a month, while the Fishel-Reese-Daffin call was every third night for their group. I remember joining their call in 1977 at the start of my career in Panama City. I was up all night treating heart failures, pneumonias, and GI bleeds, and felt just royally thumped, gaining new respect for my peers who had been doing this without protest for years. To them, it was simply part of the profession.
A beloved local teacher brought his pregnant wife to the ER one night with fever and shortness of breath, and Dr. Daffin discovered her lungs were filled with pneumonia from a viral illness. To keep her oxygen level up, she was placed on respiratory support with a modern ventilator on loan from Tallahassee and retrieved by Clint Ingram of the board of trustees to supplant the outdated simple Bird Respirator which was all they had at Bay. After a few days of stabilization, an ambulance was modified with an inverter to power the ventilator and she was transported, with Dr. Daffin riding along, to the University of Florida, where she ultimately died of irreversible lung scarring.
This spurred Dr. Daffin to start the School of Respiratory Therapy at Bay Memorial and to take over the heretofore unreliable blood gas laboratory. He pioneered the school, teaching classes as well as setting up protocols for treatment until ultimately a pulmonologist was found. To this day, Dr. Daffin trained respiratory therapists at Gulf Coast State College until Hurricane Michael destroyed the classroom, and classes are currently being held in Dr. Daffin’s waiting room as a temporary solution.
Another seminal case found Dr. Daffin treating a 35-year old hypertensive gentleman suffering kidney failure. At the time, there were no dialysis systems in Bay County. The patient had no financial means and Dr. Daffin arranged dialysis in Pensacola three times a week with the poor patient traveling back and forth by Greyhound bus. After three months, the patient was exhausted, so Dr. Daffin, with guidance from the nephrologist in Pensacola, organized a dialysis clinic with two dialysis units at Bay Memorial in a mobile home that backed up to the ER. Once again, this involved setting up the protocols, training the nurses, making the rounds, and supervising the dialysis in addition to his office commitments. Dr. Daffin finally recruited a young nephrologist in training, Dr. Richard Walker of Ohio State, to come to Panama City and continue the program which has been successfully expanded locally.
If Sid has a fault, it is that he is often late for appointments. His office was legendary for running late. Yet his patients defend him fiercely as he is thorough, informed, patient, and gives each person the undivided attention we all crave, and this is part of his excellence as a physician. His long-suffering nurse often stayed with him until eight at night until all the patients had been seen. I know that the late Dr. Frank Syfrett, a wonderful Bay County family practitioner, could have seen any physician for his complex illnesses, but he chose Dr. Daffin to navigate a difficult medical situation that eventually ended with his untimely demise.
Dr. Sid Daffin, a Christian man who has served our community and our profession in an exemplary way, has saved countless lives. He has laid the foundation for better health care in Bay County, and he is still practicing every day. I stand in awe of him.
[divider]A LOOK BEHIND THE STETHOSCOPE
Sid’s Grandfather, S.A. Daffin, Sr., started Daffin Mercantile in Marianna, bringing the company to Panama City after spending two years at the University of Florida and marrying a Banker’s daughter, Carlene, from Chattahoochee, Florida. Sid was born in Panama City in 1936. He and his siblings, Edgar and Julianne, grew up on St. Andrews Bay, in Panama City’s Cove neighborhood.
As a Boy Scout, Sid attended the National Jamboree, played guitar and piano, enjoyed water skiing in Watson Bayou behind a Carter Craft with 25 HP Johnson, and attended Camp Cherokee on Lake Burton in North Georgia in the summers. After Jinks Middle School, Sid was off to Chattanooga to McCallie Boarding School, graduating in 1954, and thence to Emory University in Atlanta where he initially started in pre-law. His participation in the campus Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, however, led him to change his major to general science as preparation for a career in medicine, and he graduated from Emory University School of Medicine in 1962.
Interestingly, Sid and Dr. Phil Cotton both participated in summer externships at Bay Memorial in Panama City as medical students and, of course, both returned to practice in our community to our great benefit. Sid’s internship in internal medicine took place at the Emory VA program, but then he was drafted into the U.S. Army and posted to Korea as a Battalion Surgeon with the 7th Infantry Division for a cold and lonesome year. His second year was at Fort Eustis, Virginia, as a General Medical Officer in an infantry battalion aid station which only whetted his appetite for further training.
Dr. Daffin began his second level of postgraduate training in family medicine at the University of Colorado for two years but decided to transfer to the University of Miami in internal medicine to satisfy his desire for more training where he was later board certified in this cerebral specialty. He also completed a year fellowship in renal and endocrine which was later to stand him in good stead.
With two daughters, Julianne and Maryann, from a previous marriage, Dr. Daffin married Rebecca Southwell, an attorney from Tallahassee in 1995. Becky enjoys an excellent reputation in a second career as an attorney in Bay County. She is also an accomplished interior decorator and operated Georgian Interiors in downtown Panama City for many years. Becky has also displayed the art of many local artists, including coastal landscape artist Pat Syfrett.
Like his father before him, Sid participated in the First Presbyterian Church, teaching Sunday School for forty years and serving as an Elder. He also oversaw the youth program where his water- skiing parties were very popular. His commitment to his faith was recognized by his office staff, and one day he was greeted by a plaque saying “By the Grace of God” draped across his office door, and that plaque has a place of honor there to this day. Indeed, his faith has guided his life and his service to his patients, his family, and his community. He and his wonderful wife, Becky, now attend the First Methodist Church.