The 18-hour Days of Internist Cynthia LigenzaFree Access

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Dr. Cynthia Ligenza is well-known to Philipstown residents, and has cared for many of them for years. Photo by Anita Pel tonen

Dr. Cynthia Ligenza is well-known to Philipstown residents, and has cared for many of them for years. Photo by Anita Peltonen

New York Presbyterian Medical Group

Cold Spring

A normal day for Cynthia Ligenza begins at 4 a.m. and ends after 10 p.m.

A hair-on-fire day?

“Our pediatrician had a heart attack in the office, and I had to give him medicines intravenously while talking to the cardiologist on the phone.”

Ligenza, an internist and pulmonologist, is proud that her detailed medical notes show her love of writing. Cardiologists “tell me my notes are like novels,” says the tranquil MD. With a voice not unlike her favorite instrument, Ligenza, 64, plays chamber viola, and is known for her alert listening and love of curry.

With the amount of ground she covers between her north Putnam home, Hudson Valley Hospital and her Cold Spring internal medicine office, her car is a kind of sanctuary. If not on the phone reassuring patients or ordering tests, she might hum spiritual chants or listen to NPR or music.

She has been a primary-care physician to many Philipstowners since 1999; Ligenza also admits and visits hospital patients at New York Presbyterian in Cortlandt Manor. Thursdays are for, wait for it, house calls, and sometimes she sees patients on Saturdays or Sundays, too.

There are emergencies, too. Many involve driving. And Ligenza and her ceramics-artist husband, Tony Moore, live five dirt-road miles off Route 9.

Driven

Ligenza “wanted to be a doctor for the people.” Her first 20 years in medicine, she worked in public hospitals. Ligenza grew up in Enfield, Connecticut, in a Polish family who worked in the textile industry. Her grandparents lived and met in factory housing. Her mother and aunts played mandolin chamber music.

She used to be in two string quartets. The advent of computer records ended that, she says, because of the time it took from her day. “But they are better for the patients,” she said.

Switching Gears

“In my teens, I wanted to be a psychiatrist, after witnessing the psychological complexities of family,” Ligenza says.

Ligenza majored in philosophy. “But at college at Rensselaer, I decided psychiatry wasn’t developed well enough to help in many situations.” So she chose primary care, and studied medicine at University of Connecticut’s new medical school. “The professors were enthusiastic mentors.”

Then Harlem Hospital asked her to work in a politically progressive residency training. “Many residents came to tears from physical exhaustion” at some point, she said, while working with tuberculosis patients for these underserved communities.

She became attending in intensive care after residency, then did pulmonary training.

Most fulfilling about the practice of medicine in any community for Ligenza is “to see how people live. The buildings and culture here may be different, but human responses to illness, crises and joy are all the same.”

And She’s Off!

Why does Ligenza sleep less than six hours?

“I curtail my sleep either of necessity to work, or out of desire to do something special, like Shakespeare at Boscobel, music/dance/theater at Bard Summerscape, or to play chamber music.”

Otherwise, she’s “checking e-mails, New York Times headlines, weather, clinical documents, lab results, prescription renewals, or hospital electronic medical records [for] vital signs and locations of patients I have there, test results, and progress notes from support staff.”

She heads downhill from her East Mountain home around 6 a.m., after a breakfast – “an omelet, or lamp chops, fish or a hearty salad – my biggest meal of the day.”

Lunchtime means “eating soup or stew from a thermos or salad one-handed, while clicking the mouse with the other … Patients again starting at 1:30, until anywhere between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. I have supper while driving home, typically fruit and cheese or fruit and nuts. I often return to the hospital to admit someone.”

Ligenza stands while at work, up to 9 hours. If she gets out of the office by 5:30, she might go horizontal for Pilates or swimming at her health club.

When she finally gets home, “I greet my husband, feed the lovely cats, wash my food containers, play my violin or viola for a very short while if I am lucky, check and answer e-mails, take a shower and then go to sleep after holding some jin shin jyutsu points and petting the lovely cats.”

Even exhausted, Ligenza remains an alert listener. While medical recordkeeping “changed everything” by requiring her to stand at a laptop, she wants to hear what patients need to tell her, even if it’s personal rather than medical.

The laptop seems to be the only albatross around her neck. She loves equally her 20 years at teaching hospitals in the city and her job here.

“The communities are not as different as you might think. Before, I had patients without the resources you have here or a safety net. But in this community, life can be just as fragile. People lose jobs, lose their health insurance, or don’t always have extended family.”

“One of the biggest differences” between working here and on a hospital team “is that here you are on your own,” she says. “Before, there were always fellows and teams. Now I am ‘it.’ ”

And, she says, with a gleam in her eye: “I hope to work ’til I’m 88.”

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