The Medical Physicist
Spring
2013
Spotlight on Hidden Physicists
The Medical Physicist
Charles L. Chipley, Medical Physicist, 21st Century Oncology, Inc.
Charles L. Chipley, Nokomis, FL
Medical Physicist, 21st Century
Oncology, Inc.
I worked as an emergency medical technician in high school, and loved it, but had always wanted to be a US naval officer, which required a college degree. Since my military college had no maritime-oriented degree programs, I chose math simply because it was a subject in which I excelled in high school. After four years of college, I got my wish and started working as a naval officer. A couple of years later, while jogging in the surf at Virginia Beach, I stepped into a hole and fell. Unable to stand afterward, I was sent to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital's nuclear medicine department, where I was injected with a radioactive compound and scanned with a scintillation camera. I was informed that my ankle was broken—the phosphorus was taken up preferentially at the injury site. From that point on, I read everything I could about nuclear medicine, as I saw it as a perfect career fit for me, combining math (at which I was good) with medicine (which I enjoyed). After my commitment to the Navy was over, I transferred to the Reserves and enrolled back in school. I earned a master’s degree in health physics with a medical physics track from Georgia Tech. I then began my physics career working in radiation oncology departments of hospitals and freestanding cancer centers in Alabama, Maryland, Florida, and even the US Virgin Islands. I have done some diagnostic physics in radiology and nuclear medicine, and taught radiological physics to x-ray and radiation therapy students at community colleges.
I have been doing a job for twenty years now that I enjoy, and at which I’m good, and I am well-compensated to boot. I consider myself fortunate. Ironically, my lowest undergraduate grades were in physics—I got a C both semesters, the only ones I ever got in college. If you had told me then that someday I would be a physicist, I would have laughed in your face! Life can be funny.
Casey M. Dedeugd, Orlando, FL
Medical Student, University of Central Florida