Even the most accomplished among us was once a child. So a question about his childhood seems a good — if predictable — first question for Dr. John Krcmarik, the board-certified, fellowship-trained pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine specialist who came to Beaufort Memorial Pulmonary Specialists in January after two decades of practice in Traverse City, Michigan. His answer, though, is anything but predictable.
“My childhood was interesting,” says Dr. Krcmarik, chuckling. “I’m one of 13 children. I’m No. 4, as my father would affectionately call me.”
Long accustomed to the shock effect of that revelation, he’s no doubt long accustomed, too, to the request for details about growing up with five brothers and seven sisters that quickly follows. And he’s glad to oblige.
“Well, there’re always people in your life — it’s always very busy!” he begins. “It can be fun and stressful at the same time. We grew up in bunk beds. The space around your bed, especially if you lived on the bottom, it was your space to protect. That’s what you could call your own in life.”
“My mother was really involved in the child-rearing,” continues the sunny, instantly likable pulmonologist. “She was sort of the drill sergeant.”
Read More: Dr. Michael Sciarra: Setting Roots in South Carolina
Foundational Years
Dr. K., as he’s commonly known — Krcmarik (pronounced kerch-mar’-ick) can be a tongue twister — admits he was not always down with the program at home.
“I was a surly kid, but not in a bad way,” he says. “It’s just that I wanted to stay out longer with my friends. I was more social than they [his parents] were used to. My mother was very regimented. She wanted us home for dinner. She wanted us in bed at a certain time. I was bucking the system.”
The system, maybe, but not the gene pool. His mother’s family was “very medical” as he describes it, with three doctors among her close relatives. Genes aside, though, the family doctors didn’t influence him as much as school, where at a young age he determined for himself what his interests were.
“Things like biology and chemistry were always fascinating to me,” he says. “I’m a very science-minded guy. I love physiology! That kind of right-brain stuff has always been easier for me. It’s something I think that early on guides you. At the same time, there’s an art to it. I call myself an ambidextrous-minded guy — meaning I use both.”
Read More: How Lung Cancer Screening Can Help Save Lives
A College Conundrum
Dr. K. went to college at Loyola University of Chicago, thinking he was probably going to be an accountant.
An accountant? Here, a little explanation is needed.
“My father said, ‘You’re going to be an accountant,’” Dr. K explains. “I made it through one semester of accounting. I was bored to tears. I said, ‘I don’t want to do this!’ Thank God for good accountants, but I’m not one of them. It’s just not my hardwiring.”
Accounting was out for sure, but what was in? He was struggling to decide.
“I said, ‘I’m just going to take a bunch of everything and see where the chips fall.’”
Ultimately — and you won’t have seen this coming — he chose as his major philosophy.
“It’s funny, I borrow from that [philosophy] all the time,” he says. “Philosophy is about understanding life. It teaches you to think, and it broadens you. It has to broaden you. You have to see things from a different perspective.”
To hedge his bets, Dr. K. also took enough science courses to, in his words, “do medicine” in case he decided on that. As it happened, one random day, he woke up and said to himself, “I’m just going to try the MCAT and see what happens.”
What happened was admission to Loyola’s Stritch School of Medicine, only five minutes from the family’s house in the suburb of Riverside. He moved right back in and matriculated.
Read More: Sleep and Your Blood Pressure: An Intricate Relationship
The Thrill of the Bone Box
Among the kids still at home was Monica, the youngest, who was around 10.
“My little sister couldn’t leave something called my bone box [the partial skeleton loaned to anatomy students] alone!” he remembers. “I would find her in my room combing through it. Well, guess who became a physician!”
Now an internist, Monica is one of the three other doctors and three nurses Dr. K. counts among his siblings.
“It’s in our genes somewhere,” he acknowledges.
With a medical degree in hand, he moved to Lebanon, New Hampshire, for, first, an internship, then a residency and a fellowship at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
“I just wanted to be out of the Midwest, to see something different,” he says of his choice, top-notch by any standard. “I absolutely loved it.”
With both the White Mountains and the Green Mountains nearby, “it’s gorgeous” — and, he adds, “it’s just another place in which to be cold!”
Over his seven years of training, Dr. K. and his wife, Kelle, a former elementary school teacher, happily accustomed themselves to life in New England, taking up skiing and parenthood while there. The couple’s children — two sons and a daughter, now in their 20s — are all New Hampshire natives.
But roots run deep. Michigan-born and bred, Kelle especially began to yearn for a Midwestern home base. So, when her husband’s training was complete, the family headed west to Traverse City, where Dr. K. joined the medical staff at Munson Medical Center, northern Michigan’s regional referral center.
As an intensivist at Munson, he provided care, clearly with consummate sensitivity and skill, not only in clinic for patients with chronic respiratory and sleep disorders, but also in the medical center’s intensive care unit (ICU) for some of the region’s sickest patients — and, he emphasizes, for their families, too, who are “a big part of critical care.”
Read More: Can You Exercise With Bronchitis?
Teamwork as a Standard of Care
An all-in member of the ICU’s multidisciplinary rounds, Dr. K. says that “one of my favorite parts of critical care” is its teamwork.
“I’m part of a much bigger team,” he says. “It’s a very rewarding way to take care of a patient, and it’s become a standard of care. No one person can handle everything, obviously, and the care that somebody demands in that situation is very complex.”
Twenty years on in his career, Beaufort beckoned, with its promise of “a lot more sun and a lot less gray,” Dr. K. says. What’s more, “I get to do what I do, but on a smaller scale, and it’s very meaningful work.”
He already loves what the Lowcountry offers — its beaches, its physical beauty, its pace. Though his wife will be tying up loose ends in Michigan for the next few months, she’ll be driving down on a regular basis to discover the region’s attractions herself.
After one recent weekend here, “she was driving home through middle Michigan and the wheels were locking up,” Dr. K notes ruefully. “She had to chop ice off the axles. It was so cold it never melted from her way down.”
Which is something, it’s safe to say, that neither one of them will miss.
Dr. Krcmarik sees patients at Beaufort Memorial Pulmonary Specialists. Call 843-707-8040 to make an appointment.
