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From farmer to neurosurgeon
By Mary Madewell
Published May 17, 2009
Paris neurosurgeon Dr. Keith Preston is a hands-on kind of guy who likes to see results — whether it’s in the operating room or at his Painted Wind Ranch on land that’s been in the Preston family for generations.
“I like to do a job; get it finished and see the result,” the Lamar County native said Thursday afternoon from an implement shed near Howland. “I love working, but I like a sense of accomplishment.”
That’s how he describes his love for both medicine and farming.
“I went into neurosurgery instead of internal medicine because I like to see results,” Preston said. “I can go into the operating room and see immediate results. The same with putting in a crop; watching it grow; taking care of it and harvesting it.”
The Lamar County native is as natural driving a state-of-the-art tractor guided by a global positioning system as he is operating on a neck, brain or spinal cord.
“I like plowing, planting, fertilizing; and, I like driving a grain truck during harvest season,” Preston said.
The surgeon said one job complements the other.
“Neurosurgery is a rewarding field, but can be frustrating sometimes just like everything else,” the physician said. “We don’t know everything in the medical field and we can’t do everything.”
He says his farm, cow and horse operation relieves the stress of the operating room and vice versa. Preston said instead of a hobby like golf, he rather be working on the farm.
“It’s easy in medicine and in farming to get bogged down and burned out and loose sight of the big picture,” Preston said. “Having two things going on helps me focus on both better.”
After taking care of patients each day, Preston heads to The Painted Wind near Broadway, about 10 miles south of Paris on the Old Dallas Highway. The spread is about a quarter of a mile from where he grew up in the Sulphur River bottoms. He lost his father, Bobby Preston. in 1990, but his mother, Lovice Preston,
Preston still lives in the house where Preston grew up.
He attended Delmar High School and graduated there the year after Delmar and West Lamar combined to form Chisum Independent School District.
His grandparents, Dewey and Ruby Preston, live in Midway, just a few miles from the dairy farm where the grandson milked cows for his grandfather as a youth. It was that farm the younger Preston returned to family ownership after he returned to Paris in 2006. And he’s added some acreage that stretches from Broadway to Petty; some of which he has purchased and some he has leased to accommodate what the physician terms “a fairly extensive operation.”
Following high school, Preston headed to Texas A&M — College Station where he received a Bachelor of Science degree in dairy science.
“About half way through college, my dad died; and my granddad was getting older; and farming was really bad in the mid 80s — and to tell the truth there wasn’t much of a farm left,” Preston said. That’s when Preston decided to become a doctor — and not just any doctor, but a brain surgeon.
“I’ve always wanted to be top notched, so I decided to be a brain surgeon because I thought that must be the best kind of doctor there could be,” Preston said. “That’s not true, but I didn’t know any better at the time.”
Preston said the basics he received in dairy science prepared him for medical school.
“A dairy science degree at A&M is not about how do you farm; it is mostly science,” Preston explained. From A&M, he studied at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas followed by seven years in neurosurgery training at the University of Wisconsin.
While at Texas A&M, Preston kindled a relationship with a Lamar County girl who just happened to go to College Station to pursue a liberal arts degree. He married Jennifer Armstrong, originally from Chicota, in 1989.
“Jennifer taught school quite a few years in Wisconsin and in San Antonio,” Preston said. “We had three kids in Wisconsin and the last one in San Antonio.”
Following his stint in Wisconsin, the family moved to San Antonio where Preston spent two years on active duty with the United States Air Force. He practiced at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base and did a three-month stint in 2003 at the beginning of the Iraq War at Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany. He returned to Lackland to finish his military obligation and then entered private practice in San Antonio.
But big city life was not to his liking.
“I was homesick and sick of living in big cities,” he said. “I was a country boy at heart and I was so sick of traffic that I made up my mind I was moving home.”
After a brief time in negotiations with Paris Regional Medical Center, Preston loaded the family’s belongings into two U-Haul trucks and headed home.
“I bought my granddad’s land back and we moved into the two-bedroom shack grandmother and granddaddy moved into in 1956, thinking I would build a new house within six months or a year,” Preston said. “Three years later, my house still isn’t finished.”
“You may think this sounds like a good story,” Preston told an inquisitive reporter. “But four kids, two bedrooms and a loft — the reality is it’s painful and I wouldn’t necessarily recommend anyone try it. I’m just glad I’ve got an understanding wife.”
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