Dr. Komorowski retiring

By AMY KALVIG

Gazette

Cor­re­spon­dent

Through­out his career, he deliv­ered well over 10,000 babies, while focus­ing on pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine for women.

It’s been a remark­able career, but it’s time for this obstetrician/gynecologist to set­tle down and retire, so by the end of 2012, Frank Komorowski, M.D., will retire.

“I’m retir­ing for med­ical rea­sons,” he said recently.

Komorowski was diag­nosed with pan­cre­atic can­cer in Decem­ber of 2010, and had surgery the next month.

After under­go­ing chemother­apy, radi­a­tion and another chemother­apy, things seemed to be going well until this past Sep­tem­ber, when he learned the can­cer had metas­ta­sized to his liver.

Then, last month, while under­go­ing another round of chemother­apy, Komorowski devel­oped pneu­mo­nia. It was at that time that he, and his wife, Dr. Mary J. Wall, dis­cussed his retirement.

“I want this to be a smooth tran­si­tion, and to make sure my patients are well taken care of,” Komorowski said.

He plans to see patients until the end of Decem­ber, then his office will remain open, but no patients will be seen.

“At the start of 2013, it will be time to get the rest of my life in order,” he said.

He and his wife, a radi­ol­o­gist and attor­ney, have been mar­ried for 30 years.

“I always joke and say, ‘It’s been the best 25 years of my life,’” he said with a chuckle.

Komorowski spoke pas­sion­ately of his two sons, Michael and John, and his wife.

“Besides being my wife, she is also my best friend,” Komorowski said through tears.

Mak­ing sure that his sons and wife are sit­u­ated is part of what Komorowski plans to accom­plish dur­ing his retirement.

“My wife won’t be bur­dened with any­thing,” he said.

But get­ting his affairs in order isn’t all he has planned for his retirement.

“I have sev­eral projects lined up,” he said. “Ten years ago, I cre­ated a “bucket list,” but I took another look at it, and real­is­ti­cally scratched a few things from the list.”

Some of the things that remain on that list are a trip to Paris, France, a week in Spain and a river tour of Moscow-St. Petersburg.

“And there are a cou­ple of books I’d like to write,” Komorowski said. “I’ve been a pub­lished author, hav­ing writ­ten a book called Elec­tron Probe Micro­analy­sis, but that was a long time ago, and the book is out of print now.”

Such a topic may seem strange, until one real­izes that Komorowski’s first degrees were in math­e­mat­ics and met­al­lur­gi­cal engineering.

“I worked for two years at Boe­ing as a mate­ri­als engi­neer,” he said.

He made a switch to study med­i­cine after he became less inter­ested in that field.

“I stud­ied med­i­cine at the old­est med­ical school in the world,” Komorowski said of the Uni­ver­sity of Sala­manca, in Spain, which has been around since the 14th century.

His deci­sion to study med­i­cine stemmed from an altru­is­tic perspective.

“I like to think I’m old school in that I went into the field to help peo­ple,” Komorowski said.

And, he decided to study obstet­rics and gyne­col­ogy because of the nature of the field.

“It’s a nice field to go into. Gyne­col­ogy is the stal­wart of pre­ven­ta­tive health­care,” he said. “The patients you see are, for the most part, healthy, and, are look­ing to stay healthy.”

Women, in gen­eral, are good at get­ting their annual exams, but, “men just don’t do that,” he added.

Komorowski, who has an hon­orary law degree from Widener Uni­ver­sity, also said that there is much joy in his field of medicine.

“I’ve helped to bring over 10,000 babies into the world,” he said with a smile.

It can also be said that Dr. Komorowski has changed many lives for the better.

“I’ve been able to cure many prob­lems via surgery,” he said.

Another aspect of Komorowski’s life that enables him to help is through his ded­i­ca­tion to altruism.

A wine con­nois­seur, Dr. Komorowski, and his wife have devel­oped a deep appre­ci­a­tion for fine wine.

“At one point in time, we owned around 49,000 bot­tles of wine,” he said, indi­cat­ing that he cur­rently owns about eight to 10,000 bottles.

Much of the wine Komorowski owns comes from Europe, and, more specif­i­cally, Germany.

“We came to know a fam­ily there who had a nice wine cel­lar,” he said, explain­ing that Euro­peans don’t move around as often as Amer­i­cans do, so the wine stays in the same fam­ily, and in the same cel­lars for decades, which, ulti­mately, main­tains the integrity of the wine.

Komorowski’s pas­sion for wine extends beyond his own enjoyment.

“We use the wine cel­lar a lot for dona­tions to char­ity,” he said.

The biggest event in which the Komorowskis par­take is the Nashville Wine Auction’s l’Eté du Vin which is held annu­ally in Nashville to help raise money for the Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­ety for Children.

“At l’Eté du Vin, they auc­tion off din­ners, trips and wine,” Komorowski explained. “It raises about $1 mil­lion for them, and we like that it’s for the children.”

Other orga­ni­za­tions to which Komorowski donates wine include the Lyric Opera in Chicago, Russ­ian Orches­tra in San Fran­cisco and Meals on Wheels.

Komorowski’s office, 1355 W. Main St., Suite D, Belle­vue, will remain open for the trans­fer­ring of patients, but no patients will be seen after Jan. 1.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jan 3 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.