Little did I realize when I went off to medical school that I would be starting a career as well as an adventure in life. On the first day of classes the Dean described how the Iowa College of Medicine was going to mold us into physician scientists rather than simple technicians practicing “shot gun” medicine. No one could have predicted the incredible path that took me from emergency medicine to unique situations that required both methods in the art of medicine. Seated in the venerable, steeply angled, medical amphitheater, we peered down…all full of ourselves…in our short white coats as the Dean pumped our ego’s telling us that we were the “cream of the crop,” a statement that wasn’t taken lightly in Iowa.
At age 12, a boy is full of questions.
Who is he? Where did he come from? Why is his mother’s love given so freely, while he can’t seem to earn his father’s love and respect, no matter what he does?
Young Richard Larsen seeks the answers to those questions during a summertime trip to his family’s farms in Nebraska. What he learns will shape the rest of his life.
This is a group of stories relating to my medical experiences traveling about the world while practicing emergency medicine for 29 years and hospice medicine for 15 years. The final four stories in the book illustrate the return to the bedside redeeming my medical career.
If you enjoyed the stories in my ADVENTURES book, you will find more entertaining medical experiences around the world and in the ER in MORE ADVENTURES IN MEDICINE. The stories are being published in a serial episode format through Kindle Vella, and the first three episodes are free. I have finished four episodes, and I am working on the fifth. It will be an ongoing process as I add episodes over the next months and years. I’ve, also, started a sequel to GOIN’ TO NEBRASKA and plan to publish it in Kindle Vella as well. The first episode is GOIN’ TO SARASOTA with an eighteen year Richard headed off to an experimental college during the troubled times and sexual revolution of the 1960’s.
1965 – Graduated from Central High School, Davenport , Iowa
1969 – Graduated from Grinnell College Phi Beta Kappa with BA
1973 — University of Iowa College of Medicine M.D.
1973 — 74 – Trained at highland Alameda County Hospital , Oakland , CA
1983 — American Board of Emergency Medicine Certificate #800380
1974 – 2003 — Staff Emergency Physician at Penrose and Penrose Community Hospital
2005 — Board Certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine
1985 – 98 — Expert Mountain Biker. USA Cycling Master
1998 – 2016 Over 50 XTERRA Triathlons around the world
2009 — Novel writing: Published, Goin’ to Nebraska
2020 – Published Adventure in Medicine and Redemption in Hospice