Three Generations of Radiologists

My father, Mark Mishkin, MD, was a neuroradiologist before there was a subspecialty credential. He graduated from his residency at the University of Pennsylvania in 1961. After that, his department Chief, Eugene Pendergrass, MD, sent my dad to England to complete a neurology fellowship with James W.D. Bull, MD, FACR, Queens Square Hospital, London. My mother, brother and I trailed along for the year, which makes me a proud graduate of British kindergarten.

Following that year abroad, my father brought neuroradiology back to University of Pennsylvania, and he practiced there until 1978. As youngsters, my brother and I would accompany him on weekends and get rides on the pneumoencephalography machine housed in the department. My dad once told me it was the most expensive radiologic machine in the city, costing $250,000. As a high schooler, I worked in the University of Pennsylvania X-ray film library and accompanied him on occasional emergency angiograms. I did my first angiogram when I was 15 and almost fainted when the direct carotid Seldinger needle puncture started pulsing blood.

In 1986 I finished my interventional radiology fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania with Section Chief, Gordon McLean, MD. I have practiced as an interventional radiologist in Albany, New York, ever since. Currently I have the extreme pleasure of seeing my son, my father's grandson, begin the first year of his radiology residency at Albany Medical Center — the third generation in the field. My other son will begin his anesthesia residency at Alleghany General Hospital, where Gordon McLean works. I wonder if Gordon will recognize my son's last name if he meets him!