Community comes to the aid of doctor
In practice for decades
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BALTIMORE (WMAR) — “He is absolutely needed. He is absolutely essential in this community. He does way more than the average doctor.”
Tiffany Elamenuelk knows that firsthand.
It was her son Awusom’s 9-month-old check-up, but she’s been coming to Dr. Z since she was a child.
Dr. Michael Zollicoffer has cared for her family for generations.
“I don’t think he’s ever taken a day off, literally like vacations. I’ve never not been able to reach Dr. Z,” she said.
But now Tiffany worries about Dr. Z. He was diagnosed with cancer at the end of last year.
“It’s hard to wrap your head around how your primary care physician, that makes sure that you are able to survive not sure how he’s going to be able to survive,” Elamenuelk said.
“For somebody going through cancer treatment, I feel pretty good,” said Dr. Zollicoffer.
Scarier than the treatment… the fact that Dr. Z, a long-time community physician in Northwest Baltimore, was battling two forms of cancer without insurance.
“An error on my behalf. As you get old, you only can get Medicare, so I went and got my Medicare A and B, and it gets a little fun to manipulate government systems, so we lost the part B. I had known that just a few months before I got the diagnosis. I said I’ll put it back together later, and then I get to the point where I do the outpatient, and everything was denied.”
In practice for decades, thousands of patients, but the people who know and love Dr. Z say his impact goes well beyond this practice.
“It’s never been about money. I’m still on Fulton Avenue and Lafayette. I’m the only doctor staying in the hood… it’s not about your stature in life; know you are here to help people, and when you do that, that’s your reward, that’s your payment,” said Dr. Z.
Often when his patients can’t afford to pay, he still cares for them. And now it’s their turn… They’ve started a GoFundMe to help the doctor who’s helped so many. So far, his prognosis is good; the cancer has not spread.
“We hope that doesn’t happen. We will cross that bridge when we come to it, but I’ve trained so many nurse practitioners and students over the years, some of them will come in and cover if this gets bad for me. Otherwise, if I feel like I did for the last three days, we’ll be treating cancer and treating patients,” Dr. Z said.
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