Dr. Pierre Frank Saldinger, chairman of the department of surgery at Danbury Hospital, was born in Basel, Switzerland, and, as a true child of the Alps, began skiing at age 3.
“In Switzerland, on the weekends, every car on the highway has skis in the roof,” said Saldinger. “It”™s so easy to access, where I lived within an hour and a half they had absolutely excellent skiing conditions all year long. In total, I skied all my childhood and up into medical school six weeks a year. By the time I was five I”™d go up the mountain all by myself.”
By age13 Saldinger new he wanted to go into medicine but his interests were diverse, even including veterinary science.
Saldinger eventually revised his medical curiosity to surgery and in 1981 attended college at Gymnasium am Kohlenberg and went on to medical school at the University of Bern.
Saldinger has always been an avid skier and found in the sport the one activity that he enjoyed most.
“I used to regret that I didn”™t learn to play piano,” said Saldinger. “My father told me that if I really had wanted it, I would have done it. And skiing was the thing I really wanted to do. I can lose myself in it, I get up there, it”™s me and the mountain. I take a breath of that cold air and the color of the sky in the winter mountains is the most beautiful. I”™ve skied all over Switzerland but my favorite spot to ski is, by far, Zermatt,” said Saldinger of the town known for the 14,692-foot Matterhorn.Â
Saldinger has skied extensively throughout France, Italy and Austria.
As a 24-year-old medical student, Saldinger went to San Francisco to do a sub-internship to investigate how surgery was approached in the U.S.
“I liked it, not only did I like the United States, but I was also very impressed with the level of training of American residents compared to the training I got in Switzerland,” said Saldinger. “Having tasted that, I wanted to come back and train and was already thinking of coming back and moving for good.”
In Saldinger”™s third year of medical school he met a vascular surgeon who became his mentor.
“He was an unbelievable person in his bedside manner, the way he presented himself and his ethical and moral integrity. I would have done anything he had done. I wanted to become like him. He happened to be a general in vascular surgery so surgery was going to be what I would do. Had he been a podiatrist, I would be a podiatrist today.”
After two years of training in Switzerland, Saldinger left Switzerland for Beth Israel Hospital of Harvard in Boston for a year and subsequently was offered his residency in Boston.
“I guess I didn”™t do that bad of a job,” said Saldinger. “I took that chance right away.”
On a blind date in Boston, Saldinger met his wife Cathryn, an author and journalist.
Because of visa issues, Saldinger had to return to Switzerland after his residency for two years where he did research in Lausanne.
“I came back to a fellowship in liver surgery at Sloane Kettering,” said Saldinger. “Then I went back to Boston and Beth Israel for three years.”
At the urging of his father-in-law, a Danbury Hospital M.D., Saldinger reluctantly took an interview in Danbury.
“I had known the hospital,” said Saldinger. “It wasn”™t the place I thought I wanted to be, but to appease him I went to interview.”
It was his conversation about the future of the hospital with Frank Kelly, CEO and president of DanburyHospital, that caused Saldinger to take the job.
“That was seven and a half years ago,” said Saldinger.
Saldinger now lives in Weston and is currently teaching his two children, Nathan, 10, and Zoë, 7, to ski with consistent trips to Stowe, Vt. He has intentions of making this year the kids”™ first Western ski trip to Steamboat, Colorado.
Saldinger took his first trip to the West some time ago, skiing at Snow Bird in Utah.
“It was absolutely magnificent,” said Saldinger. “When you”™re up on the mountain and look down you see desert. I”™m used to looking down and seeing lakes, forest, villages and other mountains, it was very odd.”
Saldinger”™s wife had a knee injury when she was young, but he has been able to build her into a slopeworthy partner.
“You have to be able to anticipate things whether it”™s on the slope or operating,” said Saldinger. “When you operate you need to be able to foresee the problems and do the right thing for those problems before they come up and not as they come up. How I feel skiing is much like the runners who get this drugged up feeling when they run.”
Saldinger says he”™s never been badly injured, but he”™s also not reckless. He trains with leg exercises all year round to ensure that he can handle as much time as possible on the mountain.
