By Mary Malloy
"We evacuated the day before the hurricane hit," said McDonald."My husband Stephen and I spent three days in Birmingham, Alabama." McDonald's husband, Stephen Klyce, is a PH.D. and does research.
According to McDonald, Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, locked down the city shortly after the flooding, and McDonald was not able to get back to her home or her practice, both of which were located in the heart of the city.
"Life was uncertain," said McDonald. "Life as we knew it was over." All they could do, she said, was watch it on television, like the rest of the world. When they were allowed back in, they discovered that their main house, which was old and built on high ground in the Garden district, was not in good shape. "There was heavy damage," said McDonald. "Windows were shattered, branches destroyed parts of the house, but luckily no water damage." Another house that they owned, however, was eventually demolished because of the effects of 33 feet of water. Her office was protected by the National Guard, which meant no one could enter -- and that included her patients. "We could go in with a mask on to get papers or records," said McDonald.
McDonald's heart may be in New Orleans, but her roots are in New York, having earned her medical degree at Columbia University and served her internship and residency at Lenox Hill Hospital and Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital/Cornell. "I always loved New York," said McDonald. "We used to come here for the theatre and the restaurants, so this was the first place I came to when I needed at home." She completed her corneal fellowship at LSU Medical Center in New Orleans, which is where, in 1987, she performed the world's first excimer laser surgery to decrease or eliminate the need for glasses
In August, McDonald joined the Ophthalmic Consultants of Long Island (OCLI) in Lynbrook. She is among the hundreds of medical professionals - in her case, one of a few internationally-recognized experts - forced to move their practice from New Orleans, as local patients relocated with little promise of returning.
Having spent the past 25 years with LSU Eye Center at the LSU Medical Center School of Medicine and as a Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology at Tulane University Health Sciences Center, McDonald is a pioneering refractive surgeon with a broad range of expertise, including the correction of age-related near vision loss (presbyopia) with invisible radio waves - a procedure called NearVision CK (Conductive Keratoplasty). She stil has two employees on staff in New Orleans.
McDonald, who currently lives with her husband in Manhattan, has recently purchased a home on Long Island's North Shore, in Port Washington. Stephen still travels back and forth to Louisianna. "But we have found a home here," she said.
Do you knonw someone is Lynbnrook or East Rockaway with a special story to tell? Let me know at MMalloy@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 202.
