BROOKINGS – Fixing animals and fixing people has been the life mission of Brookings native Patrick J. Moriarty, first as a doctor of veterinary medicine and now as a board-certified orthopedic surgeon at Avera Medical Group Specialty Clinic.

“It completes the circuit,” explained the doctor, who was born in the old Brookings Hospital. “It has a very nice feel. It’s good to be back. There’s a lot of memories here.”

He has seen patients who worked for his grandmother when she ran a restaurant in Brookings.

Moriarty, whose family has been in Brookings for four generations, grew up and graduated from high school here in 1973. During those years he got a hint of what his life’s vocation would be.

“We had horses on the west side of town and other animals,” he said. Observing well known and highly respected “old Doc McKnight,” Moriarty was thinking that being a veterinarian “looks like a pretty good job. You drive around the countryside. You work with animals. I liked that, fixing things up that were broken, cuts, whatever. I was intrigued by it.”

He also worked at Nick’s Hamburger Shop on the weekends “cleaning up and doing the skillet” and at the Ben Franklin store “stocking the shelves, dusting, catching the parakeets that got loose.” 

However, in high school he became ill with leukemia, which would stay with him for seven years before going into remission following an extended treatment with chemotherapy as part of a study group. Meanwhile, Moriarty “became a serious student in his last year of high school” and went on to three years of study at South Dakota State University. 

D.V.M. and north to Alaska

“I was just seeing what I could do in college,” Moriarty said of his SDSU days. 

He looked to courses that would have applicability to veterinary medicine. He applied and was accepted to Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine in Manhattan. He attended 1976 through 1980 and graduated with his D.V.M. degree.

However, prior to graduation, he had developed an interest in orthopedics and was looking ahead to the possibility of treating people as an M.D. 

“The Germans had developed plates for internal fixation versus casting and lying in bed,” he explained. “That was a real frontier that was developing. On the sideline, on my own I had gone to a course, from the guys that developed this, in Columbus, Ohio.”

Moriarty was thinking he “might just go from vet school to med school.” However, he had student loans to pay off. That led to his taking a job as a small-animal vet in Fairbanks, Alaska.

“I thought I’d go there for a year or two, pay off some debt,” the doctor said. By now his leukemia was gone (and it never returned).  

The study-group treatment that he underwent over seven years can now be completed in six to eight weeks.

Moriarty had considered coming back to South Dakota to practice veterinary medicine, but the pay at that time was pretty low.

“I got there (Alaska) because of my rural childhood, my equine training and my versatility,” he said. “I was the guy in town who did everything. There’s a lot of horses up there, so I did a lot of horses. I did as many horses as I did small animals and it boomed. It grew and grew, and pretty soon I’m paying off my debts.”

After about three years he was free of student loan debt. He stayed on for what would be a total of more than nine years. But he was still determined to go back to medical school. 

He wife urged him to “just do it if you want to do it.”

Vet work advantage

At 35 years old, Moriarty was accepted to several medical schools – all private. He opted for Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Nebraska. But he was still a veterinarian, and following his first year of medical school he returned to practice in Fairbanks during the summer. He believes that getting into medical school was helped by his versatile experience of hands-on practice of veterinary medicine in Alaska.

“I did C-sections on llamas, I did birds’ broken wings, and I did work on musk ox at a research farm and reindeer at the university,” the doctor said.

“The fish and wildlife service brought me all kinds of exotic raptors, broken wings from power lines, and (animals) from snares, traps and gunshots, lead poisoning, belly surgery and chest surgery.”

Moriarty noted that much of what he did was “a little bit seat of your pants.” 

But along the way he found what he really liked to do most: in the simplest of terms – fix things. That approach would be a driving force during medical school and as he neared graduation and considered a residency program. 

Why orthopedics?

“I like the concrete, the real,” Moriarty said of his speciality. “It’s broken. I didn’t break it. You kind of cure. Hands on. It’s structural, broken or worn out.

“To deal with chronic illness and terminal illness and dying, it’s hard. It’s hard to deal with. It takes a special person. That isn’t my speciality.

“I like to fix something that’s broken. Get them back on it; get them going. That’s what I did as a vet.”

By way of analogy, fixing human orthopedic problems is not unlike what a veterinarian does when fixing animals.

“Of course it is,” the doctor said, smiling. “Return to function. He’s not limping anymore. He’s better.”

Going into medical school and later into an orthopedic residency, Moriarty brought with him skills honed by hands-on work with live-animal patients.

“These days in medical school, they can’t have animal labs to practice on a living organism. … They don’t allow that stuff anymore,” he explained. “I’d had a working lab of that for 9 1/2 years. It was of value to myself and to patients. I had a lot of that under my belt as I went into residency.”

Moriarty’s first choice for an orthopedic residency was the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, and he made the cut. 

“You’re lucky if they pick you,” he added.

“Their reputation is based on vast experience,” he explained of his first choice. “They have expertise. They are the referral center of referral centers. We would have referrals from all over the country, from all over the world.”

Following his residency, he practiced orthopedics in Bemidji, Minnesota, for 19 years and still sees patients there. During these years, he has regularly come back to Brookings, because many of the extended Moriarty family live here. And now the time had come for him to return and to stay. His wife wife, Michele, died seven years ago; their three children are now grown.

Moriarty said he loves his profession “because it allows me to perform procedures that have a defined goal. Patients come to me with something that is worn out, painful, broken or injured and I can help return them to comfort and function.”

Contact John Kubal at jkubal@brookingsregister.com.