Throughout our quarterly newsletters, we will be providing brief updates from a sample of our research labs and happenings.

A few brief updates on some trainee happenings these past few months:

On Saturday, November 30, 2019, a pillar of the Frankel Cardiovascular Center and the Diagnostic Vascular Unit and Vascular Surgery family passed away. Tony Dornoff, Patient Services Assistant, is deeply missed, however, his legacy continues to live on with those fortunate enough to cross paths with him directly and with those that he impacted along the way.

From Sandy Brown, DVU Manager:

Tony started with the DVU in May 2007, just before the CVC opened, as our third Patient Services Assistant. His passion for always putting the patient first was immediately evident and he never stopped going above and beyond to make each and every patient’s day better. Tony never missed an opportunity to shake the hand and thank every veteran for their service whether a patient, family member, staff or anyone whose path he crossed. 

For many years Tony was a member of the CVC Floor 3 Recognition Committee. He enjoyed collaborating with staff from clinic, pathology, echo and EKG to plan floor wide events to celebrate staff including potlucks, “tailgates”, cook-offs, and holiday celebrations. Of these his favorites were always the Christmas Sock Exchange, Halloween Boo-grams and the Valentine-grams that raised money for the committee. One of the most successful, and memorable for staff, was the year Tony was in charge of the Valentine Carnations. His promotion of this event and selling the carnations for $1.00 each was a hit. True to his spirit, Tony personally delivered about 300 carnations throughout the CVC and everyone that day was talking about “Cupid Tony”.

Tony was instrumental in keeping the DVU running and functioning. He was a MiChart superuser and helped many on floor 3 during that roll out, and although he poked fun, he really was happy to wear the “superhero, superuser, big yellow t-shirt”! He was a mentor to many clerical, call center and surgery scheduler staff who rotated through the DVU for training, as well as to all the vascular sonography students through the years.  A little known fact was that he always gave each student a little gift to remember their time in the DVU at Michigan. His willingness to always try something new allowed him to impact many changes over the years, especially in the realm of scheduling and billing. In his final role as Patient Services Senior, he was an integral part of moving both the DVU and vascular surgery clinic operations forward through the optimization project, working especially close with the call center to improve access through decoupling DVU studies from clinic appointments. 

Above all, Tony was a compassionate soul who cared for others more than himself. Even as his health was declining, he was only worried about others, his family, his DVU and CVC family and his caregivers, thanking everyone and wanting to make them smile. His passing has left a big void in the DVU, but although we may not see Tony every day, he will always be with us in every Tony-ism that we fondly share, every song we hear that he sang and every time a memory brings a smile. So, as Tony would say “there’s no crying in baseball”, “the chicken is in the hen house, I repeat the frost is on the pumpkin”, “groovy like a drive in movie”, “never used to have this much snow on the roof”, “signing off the Big Guy”. What’s it all mean? Well, that Tony’s mission was accomplished, I bet you are all smiling.

We know there is great work happening all over the Section! Here's a collection of some of the awards, event recaps and recognition from this quarter. If we missed anything from your area, let us know so we can include it in the next issue.

The months of November, December and January were busy months for the entire Vascular Surgery team -- aside from the bustling Holidays, we had team members participate in the AHA Annual Conference and VEITH Symposium in November; and others traveled for invited lectures, including Dr. Coleman to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Dr. Gallagher at the University of Miami as the JJ Karmacharya Visiting Professor. Dr. Vemuri also led the Frankel CVC Aikens Innovation Challenge in November. Whether traveling near or far -- the Vascular Surgery team had a great showing of maize and blue these past few months!

Welcome to the New Additions to the Vascular Family!