My name is Zita Ficko. I am a urologist at Marble Valley Urology. I am originally from Slovakia, and
in Slovakia you have to choose what you're going to do when you're 16
years old because you have to start getting ready to apply for university.
And when I was 16, I thought yeah I may want to do medicine, I may want to do economics. I wasn't
quite sure what I wanted to do. My parents are both in economics and management so they figured
they're going to try to scare me so they arranged a shadowing opportunity for me at an emergency
room just thinking I'm going to go there and faint and you know then I'll go into business just like
them and then they'll all be happy. Well, as you can see, that kind of backfired because
as soon as I set foot in that emergency room I knew this was it. I knew this was for me.
This is where i wanted to be, so that's when I decided I wanted to be a doctor.
So I came to the U.S. when I was 18. I did my undergraduate at Yale University and then I did
my medical school at Dartmouth, and I really liked this area of the country so I stayed
for residency at Dartmouth. And then when I was looking for places to practice,
I really found out that the population I enjoy working with is the population of rural Vermont
and rural New Hampshire and rural New York. It's the stubborn farmers that are my favorite,
and this is where they are so this is where I am. Urology is a field people don't like to
talk about. It can be very private. It can be very embarrassing for people. But it is very important
and really affects their life. We can make such a huge difference in people's lives. It was really
small surgeries, which is what really really drove me to urology. What I like best about practicing
in urology is the amount of change we can bring to people's lives with just really quick surgical
procedures. When I see somebody in the emergency room who's in excruciating pain from a kidney
stone, my surgery is 30 minutes to an hour at most and it completely transforms their life. I am very
happy with the level of collaboration at Rutland Regional Medical Center. I take care of a lot of
cancer patients, so I work very closely with the Foley Cancer Center with both medical oncology
and radiation oncology. A lot of our bladder and prostate cancer patients end up needing
all three modalities. And we have Tumor Board every Tuesday. We talk about all the patients.
We stay in touch when things are changing; for example, imaging shows something new and
unexpected. I've been very happy with the level of collaboration and subsequent patient care
at Rutland Regional Medical Center. When I'm not being a doctor, I'm being a mom and a wife. I have
two children. They're twins. They're six-year-old now. So, they're taking up pretty much all of our
free time but we like to take them outdoors. We like to ski. We like to skate. We like to hike.
So if I'm not in the office, you're going to find me up on some mountain. What I like about Rutland
Regional is that it's neither too big nor too small. It is the perfect size. We have all the
latest technology; and if I want to bring a new technology in, they are very responsive in letting
me have it and letting me use it here. So I'm very satisfied. The one piece of advice I have for
everybody is blood in the urine is never normal and you should get it checked out. It could be
anything from kidney stones to the bad stuff – the kidney cancers, the bladder cancers. And please
don't ignore it and get it checked out. I've seen a lot of patients with pretty advanced pathology
because they've been bleeding for months and months and they were hoping it's going to go away
and all that did was just let the cancer spread further. Patients are very comfortable here. They
come scared and they leave reassured, and they leave happy. So I'm very happy working here.