Lee Chien-hua (李劍華), a 92-year-old physician who for nearly 70 years was the only doctor in Yilan County’s Dasi Village (大溪), recently announced his retirement, after Yang-Ming University Hospital promised to take over his clinic.
From 1946 — when Lee moved from Yilan City to found Dasi Clinic in the remote coastal community in the county’s Toucheng Township (頭城) — to Friday last week, Lee was the sole physician for Dasi and its 5,000 inhabitants.
Lee said he used to open his clinic at 6am everyday and had no scheduled days off. He also visited his patients at home, traveling by bike or ferry, if the person lived on Gueishan Island (龜山島), but age had increasingly sapped his energy, he said.
Lee, who lives next door to the clinic, said patients were welcome any time, day or night.
“I treat my patients like my own family; they have grown old with me. My regulars have become grandfathers and grandmothers themselves, and three generations of entire families call me doctor,” Lee said. “I wish I did not have to let it go, but a big hospital can take care of my people now.”
Lee said he was once called by a fisherman who suddenly fell ill. He immediately left the clinic, which was full of waiting people, and rode his bicycle for 50 minutes over roads paved with loose pebbles to get to the fisherman’s home.
When he arrived, he found that the fisherman had already left and gone out fishing.
“I really lost my temper that time. Not because he stood me up, but because valuable time was wasted, an hour that might have been be the golden hour of treatment for people waiting in the clinic,” he said.
Toucheng Township Councilor Chien Ying-chun (簡英俊), who grew up on Gueishan, said that Lee was the go-to person when any villager was sick. Chien said that there were no motorized boats at the time and the doctor had to travel for six hours at a time to visit patients on the island.
“When we were little, we complained about it at times; after we grew up, we realized he lived for his patients and every day for him was a race against time. We are so proud to see how much his patients appreciate and miss him,” one of Lee’s children said.
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