2011-2012 Texas Family Physician of the Year: Thomas E. Mueller, M.D.
Generations of Care
By Kate Alfano
Daybreak on the Gen-VI ranch reveals hues of pale blues and greens, hazy oranges, and pinkish purples as the 200 acres of rolling hills come to life. Gazing over the land dotted with oak and cedar trees, an occasional eagle or osprey overhead, one can see for miles from the broad, open porch of Thomas E. Mueller, M.D., TAFP’s 2011-2012 Texas Family Physician of the Year.
Passed down through Mueller’s wife’s family, the Zapalacs, who first arrived in Texas in the 1840s, the ranch takes its name from their children—the sixth generation to live on the land. It’s an escape in the Colorado River Valley, separated from the bustling highway by a winding road of crushed limestone and gravel. The city of Columbus itself, where Mueller practices, is its own quiet refuge along Interstate 10 between the cities of Houston and San Antonio. The town and its surrounding communities draw much of their character from their Czech roots, and Mueller describes the people in this area as “hard working, diligent, trustworthy, and respectful of what the physician has to say.”
While country life moseys along—Mueller tells family medicine residents rotating with him from Houston that a Columbus traffic jam is five cars waiting for the train to go by—rural medicine has proved to be bustling and challenging, demanding quick thinking and a breadth of knowledge. Mueller began practice in La Grange, 30 minutes away from Columbus, first as a solo family physician and later with Fayette-Lee Family Health and Maternity Care. Now he’s with Columbus Medical Clinic, a hospital-based rural health center.
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Mueller recalls an incident during his first year in practice when he was on call for the emergency room in La Grange. Two women were injured in a three-car accident on the highway after a drunken driver crossed the median and hit a car head on, also involving the car behind it. The two women arrived by ambulance at the emergency room with their husbands in a car close behind.
“It was a real eye-opener,” he says, to see one of his medical school professors step out of the car and another professor, the man’s wife, as one of the injured. Mueller sprung into action, providing first aid to the female professor and treating her friend for more severe injuries—head trauma and a pulverized femur. “Back then, when you were on ER call, you might be in your office, you might be at home, you might be at the hospital, but if anyone walked into the emergency room,” you were the one in charge, he says. Through the whole ordeal, Mueller kept his characteristic cool, treating these “VIPs” just as he would any other patient.
This inherent calm is one of the first qualities patients and colleagues identify when describing him, after his characteristic grin and easy-going attitude. “He’s obviously very caring,” says James Hrachovy, M.D., Mueller’s colleague who he’s known for more than 20 years. “He always has a smile on his face and is never too busy to listen. He’s what everyone would want in a family physician; he’s my physician. He’s old-fashioned … the epitome of what I call the old country doctor.”
Patient Karen Hernandez appreciates Mueller’s willingness to give freely of his time, even if it’s after traditional business hours. She describes a visit with him in April 2010 when she was experiencing consistent pain in her joints. He tried everything to diagnose the issue, she says. Finally, while she was still in the office, he walked across the hall to talk to the orthopedist and then walked Karen over to see him. “I was diagnosed with bone cancer, multiple myeloma,” she says. “That evening I got a call from Dr. Mueller saying that he had seen my test results and was sorry for the diagnosis. He told me that if I ever had any questions, to ask him. You just don’t hear that from a doctor. He had sought out my results and took the time to reach out to me.”
Eugene Schramek began as Mueller’s patient in La Grange in the ’80s and followed him to Columbus. “He takes interest in his patients, he’s a good listener, and he doesn’t rush patients through,” Eugene says. “He has all the time in the world.” When asked whether he would ever choose another primary care doctor, Eugene replies, “Not in this lifetime.”
Though only a patient herself for a few months, Bobbie Berger has known Mueller for 10 years. “He’s delivered all my grandbabies but two and that’s because they live out of state,” she says. “I have pictures of him with all the grandkids and there he is just”—she beams—“grinnin’.”
Mueller spent a lot of time in the obstetrics wing until last September when he scaled back on deliveries as a promise to his wife to cut down the late-night phone calls. Over 30 years, he estimates he’s delivered between 2,000 and 3,000 babies, including a record-setting 35 in one month in La Grange. The hospital presented him a cake to celebrate. Even a few thousand is a rough estimate, though. He jokes, “I’ve always thought about counting, but I would get halfway through when I was interrupted with another delivery.”
Smiling, Mueller remembers receiving one call while he and his family were riding their horses around the town square to prepare for an upcoming parade. He says the nurse sounded worried when she heard he was out riding, not realizing he was close by. Like a scene from a movie, Mueller galloped up to the hospital, tied the horse to a shoe scraper outside the door, and arrived just in time to change into scrubs and deliver the baby. Once things calmed down, he told the family of his exciting entrance and they were so amused that they took a photo of him on his horse in his scrubs, an 8-by-10 that he still has framed at his home.
Mueller’s commitment to providing the full spectrum of care from obstetrics to end-of-life comes from a long family history in medicine. Starting with his grandfather, Edwin Leo Mueller, M.D., and spanning four generations to his own children, there are 13 doctors in the family, including one currently in medical school; five nurses, including two currently in nursing school; three technicians; and two office managers. “We all knew medicine,” says his father, Edwin Lee Mueller, M.D.
His grandfather, a general practitioner, and his father, a family physician, practiced together in San Antonio. His uncle, John “Jack” Mueller, practiced family medicine in nearby Seguin. As young as 8 years old, Mueller would go on rounds with “dad and papa,” experiencing the continuity and diversity of family medicine. “We did it all,” Edwin Lee says. “OB/GYN, peds, internal medicine, cardiology, surgery, and we made house calls.” Mueller’s brother, Frank, also a family physician, says the way their dad practiced was “by making lots of time for people.”
Even though a busy practice with obstetrics meant long hours, Edwin Lee was a devoted family man to wife, Nellie, a registered nurse, and their eight children—another trait passed on to later generations. “When I was growing up, my dad frequently didn’t get home until late so we made time for vacations and together time,” Mueller says.
Sitting around the dinner table the night before Thanksgiving, trading stories with friends and family, Edwin Lee recalls their first big camping trip as a family to Inks Lake State Park in central Texas. They arrived in the station wagon on a hot summer day and he began setting up an old-fashioned wall tent before an audience of impatient kids, a task made more difficult using wooden stakes in granite-riddled ground. With help from a neighboring camper who brought over two metal stakes and a beer, the tent was ready. And because they’d heard there might be some rain, they dug a trench around it to prevent water from coming in.
That night, the wind began to blow and the rain began to fall. Water started coming in on the kids’ side of the tent, so Edwin went outside to put their window flaps down. As soon as he got settled again, it started coming in on the other side. “Then everything broke loose,” Mueller says, joining in. “The wind was blowing like crazy and we had two kids on each pole trying to hold the tent down. Water started rushing in the front door, filling the tent. Finally it started settling down a bit and we went outside. There was a picnic table covered with a peaked roof; the Coleman lantern sitting up in the peak of the roof had water in it. We started looking around thinking maybe we should go home after all of this, and saw downed trees everywhere where a tornado had come through.”
Despite this initial encounter with Mother Nature—and perhaps because of it—Mueller’s passion for travel and adventure grew. Along with wife Donna, son Seth, and daughters Stephanie and Leslie, the Mueller family motto while the kids were growing up was “have time, will travel,” whether out to their hunting lease in Comstock, Texas, the mountains of Colorado, or between TAFP meetings.
Seth, now 31, has been to 28 of the 50 states with his dad. “Anytime there was a medical meeting he always made time for family. It wasn’t leisurely time; it was more like ‘we need to be here and there tomorrow.’”
Family is paramount for Mueller, and the teamwork of his tight-knit clan allowed him to masterfully interweave his medical practice, advocacy for family medicine and rural medicine, love of traveling, and community involvement.
On nights when Mueller was working late at the hospital in La Grange, Donna would pack up dinner and take the kids to him so they could eat as a family. And though their kids were involved in many extracurricular activities, “he came to every event—even if he couldn’t stay the whole time,” she says. He even coached Leslie in soccer.
While in La Grange, Mueller was actively involved with the area chamber of commerce, serving as president and board member; the Lion’s Club, serving on their board of directors; and the Knights of Columbus, Holy Name Society, and Sacred Heart School Board. “I was set to be president of the Lion’s Club the same year as the Chamber of Commerce, but I chose the Chamber because it had a secretary,” Mueller says. He served as the medical director of the Fayette County EMS for 15 years and volunteered for more than 10 years with the MS-150, a charity bicycle ride between Houston and Austin benefiting the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which earned him a spot in the Lone Star Chapter’s Hall of Fame for Best Doctor.
Mueller’s involvement in TAFP started in medical school at the encouragement of TAFP past president James R. Winn, M.D., of Uvalde, with whom Mueller was doing a fourth-year rural medicine rotation, and continued when he was a resident through UT-Houston mentors and TAFP leaders C. Frank Webber, M.D., and Harold T. Pruessner, M.D. Over many years, he served as member or chair of numerous TAFP committees and commissions, as a delegate for the Colorado Valley Chapter, and as TAFP president.
Though Mueller’s organized medicine activity has slowed, TAFP past president Robert Youens, M.D., of Weimar, wrote in a nomination letter that his influence in the specialty hasn’t waned. “He is one of those in-the-trenches physicians who has quietly brought a positive impression of our specialty to his patients and community over many years.”
He has been “fighting the good fight for our specialty simply by being there for our patients day after day, year after year.”
In present day, Mueller’s community involvement largely centers on patient education through the hospital’s Do Well, Be Well diabetes education program. He also volunteers with the SHUMLA School, an organization in deep west Texas that strives to preserve existing Native American rock art and educate all ages on its historical significance. And he continues to teach rotating residents and students about the variety and challenges of rural medicine, passing on the wisdom gained over his own three decades in medicine and from those before him.
Back on his own ranch, Mueller talks caringly about the land and their effort to preserve it; he and his wife were awarded their district’s Resident Conservation Rancher of the Year Award in 2006 for their efforts and have held many conservation and wildlife management seminars on Gen-VI. “It’s about being a good steward of the land,” Donna says. “We believe that conserving our natural resources is essential to the future of generations to come. Our ancestors have been good role models for us, enabling us to enjoy the beauty of nature and our ranch.”
“We continue to strive to be good role models … and strive to educate others to secure a quality environment for future generations.”