Our most recent "Get to Know" session was with Dr. Donald McCurdy. We settled in at Dreamland BBQ in downtown Birmingham to discuss life, golf, and all things cataracts. We hope you enjoy this interview! Where are you from? I grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina. After high school I spent a few years in the Navy and then went to undergrad at Chapel Hill (the University of North Carolina). I also went to medical school and did my residency at Chapel Hill. How is the Tarheels basketball team doing this year?
Not too good. We lost a lot of players off of last year's team. Is that the excuse you're going with? (Laughs) Yeah, I think so. So you're a big basketball fan? Yeah, I used to be. I like the college games. Did you go to the Carolina games when you were a student there? Who was playing on the team then? As many as I could. Let's see, that spanned quite a few years. When I was first there we had Phil Ford, Bobby Jones, Walter Davis... probably names you don't know. We came close to winning a national championship in 1977 but lost to Marquette. Did they win a national championship while you were there? They won the year after I left. Michael Jordan was there at the time. I guess he was a sophomore the year they won it? What did you do in the Navy? I was a Navy Hospital Corpsman. And where were you stationed? Naval Air Station in New Orleans. I was initially in Charleston, South Carolina. The Navy puts you through a 16-week school to be a foreman and I finished first in the class so they kind of gave me a choice of what to do. I decided to do aviation medicine and that's where I became interested in eyes. Once you finished up at Chapel Hill, where did you go next? Next I spent a short amount of time North Carolina and then moved to Lexington, Kentucky. My next stop was Charlotte, North Carolina, and practiced with a large practice called Carolina Eye Associates. We did a lot of cataract surgery there. Then I had an opportunity to come here... And you perform cataract surgeries? Yes. Primarily. We are very fortunate. The practice has really built up over the years. I do surgery in five different places so I travel a good bit, but we have learned how to become very efficient. I enjoy it. I believe Dr. Matthew Albright mentioned how fast you can remove a cataract? What's your average time? I honestly don't even know. Cataract surgery is one of those things where the faster you go, the slower you get. That's a deep thought. Explain that if you don't mind. Well, I just try to do a good job. I am fairly efficient, but I don't get an opportunity to see others operate. We don't have much wasted motion, but I use fewer instruments than most other surgeons do. I try to be efficient, but a lot of that has to do with the help you have around you. I would say between five and seven minutes is an approximate average. If someone doesn't know very much about cataract removal, that seems like a very short amount of time for a serious procedure. The goal of cataract surgery is to be efficient and maintain low complications, which we do. Dr. Batson and I went to Senegal a few years ago and we started using an antibiotic in the eye at surgery. No one was probably doing that at the time and I believe that was six years ago. One of the reasons few people used antibiotics was because they feared it would be toxic. We didn't believe that toxicity would be an issue and have been using antibiotics since. We haven't had any issues (knocks on wood), which is incredible. With the number of surgeries we did, we should at least have a couple cases of endophthalmitis each year, but that hasn't been the case with the use of the antibiotics. Is using the antibiotic for cataract surgeries common now? Believe it or not, not everyone is using antibiotics. For the first year or two, I was the only one doing it, but I started getting calls from other doctors mentioning infections and asking what was I doing. Gradually, people starting using them. You spend a lot of time traveling and in the operating room for work. What do you like to do in your free time? I like to get out on the golf course whenever I can. When daylight savings time comes, which is March 11th, by the way, I will finish surgery and go play golf or practice. I try to play on the weekends, but we have two grandchildren we are raising, they are ages 10 and 12, so we do a lot of things with them as well. We travel a good bit. You just got back from Disney, right? Yeah. The boys had a blast. I enjoyed it, too, even though I didn't get to play any golf. Epcot is always good. The one thing I wanted to do was the Avatar ride, but in order to get a FastPass and skip the line, which was three or four hours long, you had to call at least three months ahead of time. It was apparently the most popular thing there. Are you a big movie guy? What's your favorite? Yeah, I enjoy movies. There are so many I really enjoy. Believe it or not, I enjoy romantic comedies. I hear you're a big reader as well. I actually do read a lot. Especially now that we can download the books with Audible. How many books do you listen to a week? I would say, depending on how long they are, probably two a week. I spend a lot of time in the car so I listen then and sometimes I have to sit in my driveway and listen. I listen to a variety of things. I like history. The Life of Winston Churchill was really good. There was an exhaustive six-volume book written about him, which was just fascinating. He was a fascinating man. He was really a Victorian gentleman who ended up in the 20th Century. I also like crime fiction. John Sandford and John Grisham. What's the best vacation you've ever taken? Probably Senegal. (Laughs) What's your favorite golf course you've played? The Honors Course in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I am a member there and get to play it several times a year. We close in the winter and open up in the middle of March and I try to get up there once every month or so. I have played Pebble Beach and liked it. I enjoy the Ocean Course down at Kiawah. What are the cases you really enjoy working on? High myopia cases are fun because you're not only doing cataract surgery, but you're doing refractive surgery as well. Some of those patients are the happiest patients in the world. You can potentially take them from being a -10 to close to plano. We hope you enjoyed getting to know Dr. McCurdy a little better! If you have additional questions or would like to see a particular type of content piece in the future, please let us know!
1 Comment
Lois McCurdy
1/22/2020 10:04:47 am
Please send a referral for Hunter. He’s losing vision in one eye and optometrist believes behind his eyeball. Thanks for your help.
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