Dr Mike Anderson - On Call

A Queenstown GP in the 70s and 80s, Mike Anderson oversaw delivery of well over 500 babies, while working with fantastic midwives, Queenstown Maternity Hospital becoming renowned nationally for exploring gentle births. Mike’s only prerequisite: “But if I say, ‘We’re going to Invercargill’, we’re going.”

A doctor for almost 50 years, Mike’s always been 20 years ahead of his time, and while ‘retired’ and living at Lake Hāwea, he admits he never stops dabbling with new innovations.

He’s still building lasers, constantly on loan to friends, used for chronic pain management and to enhance the effects of acupuncture which he trained in during an early 80’s locum in Australia.

Mike raised medical eyebrows using infrared light to trigger acupuncture points in babies with colic, and at 81 his enthusiasm for new discoveries hasn’t waned.

Born in England during World War II, Mike’s parents emigrated to New Zealand on a Swedish cargo ship in 1948, escaping post-war England for life in Dunedin, Wellington and Auckland. Aged five, the only child on board, he remembers the captain had an inexhaustive supply of pink, cream finger biscuits.

Flying for the Air Force had been his goal, until radioactive beetles at an Auckland University Science Day changed the trajectory of his life. “I was absolutely hooked on science after that,” he says. Discouraging words from a chemistry teacher put Mike off uni, so he qualified as a Medical Laboratory Technologist, training for five years at Auckland Hospital.

Working in a hospital environment Mike discovered medicine, so returned to Dunedin to do a science degree at Otago University, gaining graduate entry into Medical School.

“While studying I continued working as a hospital ‘Med Lab Tech’ - hugely beneficial for a med student.”

Mike was about to get a rural posting roasting in Queenstown, a challenge he was well-prepared for with trauma and anesthetic training, a Diploma of Obstetrics and a mentor who’d say, “It’s 2am, you’re in Queenstown, the roads are out. Pull your finger out, Anderson!”

“My sixth-year elective was spent with Pat Farry and Phil Airey in the old ‘Upstairs Downstairs Rooms’ in Rees Street and after two years Dunedin Hospital training, I joined the new Stanley Street practice in December, 1976.

“I arrived Friday, met Pat and Marten Muis, they said, ‘We need a break’ and both left town, so for 10 days and nine nights I was the only doctor in Queenstown, straight from my hospital training. It was an unbelievable baptism of fire,” Mike says.

“That first day a kid split his hand when the pulley of a flying fox crushed it into the wire. My wife had to bring all our household detergents down to help get all the grease out.”

After five years working in the Medical Centre, Mike opened his own practice, initially in the Stagepost Building and later at ‘Bedsyde Manor’ in Frankton. He used acupuncture regularly and had built his first laser in 1982.

Mike was the Police Medical Officer. “I even played pool for the ‘Blue Team’,” he grins. As examiner for the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) he’d completed a Diploma in Aviation Medicine too.

Helicopters were ‘like MASH’ in those days with the stretcher strapped outside, so, working with pilots and engineers, they fitted the stretchers inside the cockpit. “We pioneered methods for rescuing people from the mountains and getting critically ill or injured patients to base hospital, with open opposition from ‘health authorities’, sometimes landing choppers in the rose garden at Kew Hospital in emergencies.”

There was also a huge fight to get a 4WD ambulance, so the community fundraised for its own. “It was then deemed six inches (15.2cm) too short by the ‘authorities’ who declined funding!”

His obstetric training proved its worth, picking up three ectopic pregnancies in 10 days, all sent to Invercargill. “I didn’t see another one for 18 months.”

“We had to be two and a half hours ahead of any medical problem to get to base hospital in time. If the roads were out there was no help, no night flying.” He recalls sliding down the Jollies sideways in an ambulance in heavy snow at night, with mother, baby and nurse in the back.”

In 1990 Mike obtained a scholarship, training at the multi-disciplinary pain clinic in Seattle – a world first team approach to chronic pain.

Back in NZ he worked for the Dunedin Hospital Pain Service for 25 years, and later the Mercy Pain Service, while completing a Diploma in Industrial Medicine, training and working as an Occupational Medicine Specialist. “We managed, and later prevented, problems such as Occupational Overuse Syndrome.”

He taught Occupational Medicine at the Department of Preventative and Social Medicine at Otago University as a Senior Professional Teaching Fellow until health issues saw him retire in 2021.

These days Mike’s into radio-control model planes as President of Southern Lakes Model Flyers, and volunteers at Wānaka’s Transport Museum.