Long-time internist retires, reflects on changing field

“Back in those days, when I was trained, you were trained to do basically everything,” Comly said. “Nowadays, they would never give me privileges to do these things … They would always have a specialist do them now.”

Comly took a winding path to IMH. He originally dropped out of the engineering program at the University of Wyoming to serve in the military, returning to UW in 1972 and restarting his undergraduate work at the age of 25.

“I really wanted to be a cardiologist, but I just figured I needed to come and get some work done, because I was older,” he said.

Comly was a member of the second class to partake in the WWAMI program and its first graduate to settle down in Laramie.

WWAMI — which stands for Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho — is a medical education program during which UW students complete their first year in Laramie, their second year at the University of Washington School of Medicine and their third and fourth years at clinical sites throughout the five-state region.

“(WWAMI) basically pays for your tuition and your books and everything and you’re required to come back and work for three years, or pay them back,” Comly said. “There’s a lot of doctors who never came back to Wyoming … and they just paid back whatever they needed to pay back.”

Comly went to medical school at Creighton University and did his residency in internal medicine in Hennepin County, Minnesota. He said he returned to Laramie with 12 other WWAMI graduates, most of whom put in their three years and left.

“But I was planning on coming back to Wyoming anyway,” he said.

Comly said he stayed in Laramie because he appreciated the small-town atmosphere.

“You go down to Fort Collins, you go down to Denver, and you’re just a number,” he said. “The thing I’ve liked about working in a smaller venue is that it’s really a community. And the people that you treat are the people that you know from every day and not just from your office.”

Comly said the atmosphere fits with the personalized care he likes to give patients.

“I practice the old fashioned way,” Comly said. “I’m probably the only doctor in Laramie that wears a white coat.”

But IMH has grown through the past three decades to include more services and new ways of distributing those services.

“This has gone from being a very small community hospital to now a really pretty decent hospital,” Comly said. “We can do lots of things now … Laramie is getting up there and now we’re part of the UCHealth system, which is good, I think. We’ve been able to do a lot more and recruit a lot more.”

But not all changes are easy and some, such as recent changes to the hospital’s computer system and a natural trend toward more and more specialization in medicine, are quite difficult for jack-of-all-trades such as Comly.

“Doctors now are not coming out (of school) as internists or family practitioners anymore,” he said. “They’re coming out as specialists. Most doctors now are coming out as specialists because it’s just becoming harder to be a general practitioner.”

Though he is a non-specialist, Comly said he was the only doctor in Laramie who does echocardiography, which he defined as “ultrasounds of the heart.”

“I do pretty much most of the non-invasive cardiology here,” Comly said. “And the doctors from Cheyenne and from Fort Collins, Colorado, when they need non-invasive stuff done on a patient in Laramie, they always call me and ask me to do it.”

Kendle Dockham, IMH marketing manager, said the hospital was “exploring all options on what the community as a whole needs” regarding Comly’s replacement.

In August, Comly, now 70, dropped from working full-time to working two days a week.

“But I find that I can’t be the kind of doctor that I want to be being part-time,” Comly said. “You can only see so many patients. I mean, I had almost 1,800 patients — the largest practice in town. You can’t take care of those doing two days a week.”

Comly added he disliked the process of determining which patients to keep seeing.

“So, I’ve been trying to basically keep the really sick patients and the real heart patients that need some extra help, but I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings by saying ‘I’m not going to see you anymore, but I’m still going to see so-and-so,’” he said. “I don’t want to pick and choose patients.”

Comly said he wants to be the best doctor he can be, and he simply cannot do that working part-time.

“I really enjoy being a doctor and don’t want to retire,” he said. “But I just don’t think I fit into the new system and I can’t be a part-time doctor. I tried and I can’t. It’s just not me.”

Comly said he will instead spend his time volunteering, at the Hospice of Laramie — where he is the medical director — and Interfaith-Good Samaritan. He said he will also take on more shifts at the Downtown Clinic, where he already volunteers.

“(The Downtown Clinic) can do all kinds of things now and we can really help the people who really need to have health care but can’t really afford it,” he said. “It’s really a good thing.”

Comly added he would also spend more time with his family, more time fishing and more time in his woodshop as well.