Like father, like son

For most of his life, R. Douglas Matthews repeatedly heard one message from his father, Chico colorectal surgeon Joseph Matthews.

“I kept telling him, ‘Doug, you don’t want to be a doctor,'” the elder Matthews recalled.

Joe Matthews said this while Doug was growing up. He said it again in the 1990s, when Doug worked as a seasonal firefighter for CalFire. He said it when Doug left the fire service and attended Santa Clara University. He even said it when Doug had become a doctor after graduating from Boston University School of Medicine in 2003.

The life of a doctor isn’t for the faint of heart. “You marry the profession as well as your wife,” Joe Matthews explained, and his son is both a husband and a father. Moreover, economics and bureaucracy make health care a challenging field for an independent physician not employed by a major medical center.

Doug didn’t listen, of course.

“Next thing I knew, he was going into surgery,” Joe Matthews said. “I think he had some grand plans; he just didn’t include me in them.”

Not at first, anyway. Doug Matthews completed a six-year residency at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, in 2009. He went on to a year-long colorectal surgery fellowship at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center in New Brunswick, N.J., before heading back Chico in 2010 to become a colorectal surgeon like his old man. Now Doug is following in Joe’s footsteps—and in close proximity. He joined the private practice his father shares with Dr. Kevin Dorsey-Tyler. The doctors Matthews even perform surgeries together.

“I’m having a ball working with my son,” Joe Matthews said. “Fortunately we’ve always been able to talk to each other. It’s been working very, very well.”

Doug agrees: “We’ve been a very productive team.”

The younger Matthews decided to work with the elder to gain the benefit of his father’s experience. “I’d have someone as a mentor before his retirement,” Doug explained, adding: “My mom was thrilled because she heard the word ‘retirement.’ I don’t think she realized we’d enjoy working together so much that retirement isn’t on the fast track.”

Said Joe: “I’m a kid in the toy shop with all the new techniques he’s brought with him. New techniques have really blossomed.”

The big buzzword in colo-rectal surgery, as in other surgical disciplines, is “minimally invasive.” Many operations that used to require large incisions and week-plus hospital stays now can be performed with small cuts, reducing the risks of complication and infection along with reducing recovery time.

Doug Matthews learned, practiced and mastered minimally invasive techniques for colorectal surgery while in postgraduate training. Joe Matthews found he not only was a mentor to, but also a disciple of, his son.

“Between his techniques and my wisdom, we’re doing really well,” Joe quipped.

The procedures themselves aren’t radically different when performed with minimally invasive techniques, which Joe Matthews explained as “the same surgery without opening the abdomen.”

Instead of a cut 10 to 14 inches long, the surgeon now just needs to make a 2-inch incision below the belly button. Technology has progressed to the point where physicians can see inside the abdominal cavity with fiber-optic tools known as laparoscopes and can utilize more slender instruments to repair or remove tissue.

The operation itself may actually take longer with the new equipment, but the average recovery time for the Matthewses’ patients is four days, and some patients leave the hospital in two days.

“It’s very dramatic,” Doug Matthews said. “Technology itself is moving people along quicker.”

Joe and Doug Matthews perform their surgeries at Enloe Medical Center, where Joe has served on the Board of Trustees. Both are excited about the Century Project expansion that will include modernized operating rooms hard-wired to accommodate new technology. Currently, the Matthews duo utilizes the same laparoscopic equipment used to perform gallbladder surgeries and to remove appendixes.

Joe Matthews said Enloe is considering an upgrade.

Doug Matthews made the switch from one life-saving career to another in 1999. He’d worked two years as a dispatcher, following four as a firefighter, and feared the job path in firefighting would “promote me out of what I loved doing.”

Leaving the fire service proved a difficult decision, but then things began to slide into place for his new career. He knew he wanted to be a surgeon when surgical rotations in medical school really piqued his enthusiasm, and once he decided to be a surgeon, he knew he wanted to specialize in the lower abdomen.

“It’s a niche market,” Doug explained. “The colorectal surgical field is underrepresented because many surgeons don’t want to deal with the colon and stool.”

Neither he nor his father shares that aversion. Consequently, they’ve developed a symbiotic relationship.

“Certainly I need the wisdom of people of my father’s generation,” Doug said. “They provide the safety and the ‘why’ [we do things the way we do]. We also need people of my generation to provide the ‘how.'”