Dr. Odom Devotes Deep Dedication To Patients
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WATER VALLEY – If you stop by the nursing home or hospital in Water Valley, you will likely spot Dr. Paul Odom doing the same thing he has for the last six decades – taking care of patients. His commitment to this community is tireless, as is his drive to ensure Yalobusha General Hospital and Nursing Home will thrive for generations to come.
“I feel like, and I’m certainly toward the end of my career, we have a great group of doctors and nurse practitioners who will keep this hospital going into the future. That has been my main concern,” he shares.
Dr. Odom’s deep commitment comes after working over half of his career, since 1988, in Water Valley. He has weathered the hard times, working countless hours to serve the community when there weren’t enough physicians in the area. The physician’s insight comes as he reflects on his family, his career, his co-workers and his patients. He heaps praise on the four physicians he works alongside at Yalobusha Health Services (YHS) – Dr. Daniel Hester, Dr. Renee Taylor, Dr. George Abraham and Dr. Heidi Pratt. He shares a deep appreciation for the seven nurse practitioners who also shoulder the load.
He points to the addition of Dr. Pratt – who came at a precarious time back in 2008 – as the turning point for building the strong network of health care providers.
“When she came here I was in a mess with too much work. Dr. (Joe) Walker was ill and wasn’t able to do what he wanted to do. Dr. Pratt saved my bacon,” he recalls. “Since then we have been able to recruit other doctors. Now there are five of us who rotate working weekends. Every fifth weekend, that is pretty nice.”
Back in 2008 wasn’t the first time Dr. Odom had been overloaded, 20 years earlier when he came to Water Valley the schedule was also brutal. He worked around-the-clock to serve the community.
The Path To Water Valley
Years earlier, in the late 1970s, Dr. Odom spent a year working in Water Valley. The community was a stopping-off place after working 13 years in a small Appalachian town. He was heading to Destin, Fla. to practice – working at the beach-side town was a long-time dream. He admits that his stop in Water Valley was to prep for the Florida board exam, a necessary requirement.
“I didn’t feel too bad about leaving Water Valley, there were a number of practicing doctors in the community,” he added.
Nine years later, in 1988, the situation had changed and the community faced a shortage of physicians.
“The hospital was in a bind, so they sent several people from Water Valley down to talk to me about coming back,” Dr. Odom continues. The entourage included John Ingram, Herschel Howell, Herman White and his brother, Wallace Odom, a Water Valley resident. The plea was strong and he agreed to return. He recalls meeting the radiologist at the back door of the hospital soon after his arrival.
“He said, “I want to see a man who decides to leave Destin,” Dr. Odom continues with a deep chuckle.
To understand his passion, we travel back to his childhood. He grew up in Holmes County, in Tchula, surrounded by a railroad family. His father was a yardmaster for the railroad and mapped out his son’s career.
“His boss was located in Jackson, and together they decided I was going to be an electrical engineer,” Dr. Odom continues. He enrolled at Mississippi Southern, now the University of Southern Mississippi.
“I didn’t like it, after one year I came home and told him that I didn’t want to do that anymore. So I went into the Marines for three years,” he explains. Following his military service, he attended Ole Miss, studying pre-med.
“After three years I had a letter in my hand that said I was accepted in the medical center in Jackson. But I had a problem, the GI Bill had run out. I thought about it and said, ‘Lord, if you will get me through medical school I will give you a year some where in a needy area,’” he continued.
Dr. Odom made it through medical school, working odd jobs and borrowing money. He had forgotten about that pledge and accepted a job on the Gulf Coast at Ocean Springs. A year later, a doctor came through recruiting physicians to work in the Appalachians.
“I said, ‘Lord, now I remember that promise,’” his story continues. He went to the Appalachians to work and after a long year he had a clinic going.
“I hated to leave, so I asked for another year. I spent 13 years up there,” Odom said.
Life Outside of Work
Dr. Odom points to his wife as his strongest supporter.
“I have a great wife, Erv Odom, she has been my rock behind me all the way,” he said. “She knows this is my passion, and she wants to support me every way she can. And she does.”
He also has four great kids and grandchildren who bring great joy.
But the stories are short when it comes to time away from the hospital and clinic. Dr. Odom’s joy stems from taking care of his patients.
“A few years ago when I got a chance, I would play a little golf at our country club. I got so busy that I couldn’t spend hours on the golf course, I had to drop it,” he said.
His favorite times outside the clinic were taking dental and medical mission trips with Binnie Turnage in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.
“It gave me a different perspective because we saw a lot of poverty,” he said. “It was a terrible situation down there.”
In more recent years, he shares a story about his brief experience with social media.
“The nurses at the nursing home thought I should be on Facebook. They took my picture and put it on Facebook. I thought it was a good idea, I could kind-of look in and see what is going in the community. But within a few days, I had several hundred people wanting to be friends,” he said. Totally overwhelmed, Dr. Odom had to delete his profile. There simply wasn’t enough time to work and handle the Facebook requests. That comes as no surprise as he has treated three generations of patients in the community, building bonds with hundreds of people.
“You develop a close relationship with your patients. You take on their problems,” he explains. “It grows and grows with each passing year. You treat their children and see their children grow up. Sometimes it is astounding when a six-foot, 200-pound 30 year-old walks up and says ‘Dr. Odom, you delivered me.’ It has a lot of rewards. And I know them all the way back to their granddaddy and grandmother. You know their problems. You know who was a diabetic and who had troubles. It helps to understand their problems.”
Those strong connections made the Covid-19 pandemic extremely painful.
“Covid came out of nowhere, it was devastating. It really taxed our community, our hospital and the entire country,” he shares.
With his advanced age, Dr. Odom’s colleagues strongly advised him to stop working in the clinic when the epidemic started.
“They said, ‘come out of the clinic. You go down to the nursing home and take care of the residents.’ It turned out we had more Covid there. I really appreciated the doctors and nurse practitioners wanting me to leave the clinic so I wouldn’t be exposed to so much Covid. They were trying to protect me, but there was no safe place. No matter where you were,” Dr. Odom adds. “When it happened, we lost 14 people here at the nursing home within two weeks. It was devastating.”
Past And Future
Dr. Odom credits former YHS administrator Terry Varner and past hospital board members as the visionaries who invested heavily to expand the footprint of the county-owned hospital and nursing home to include five clinics across the county, a pharmacy in Coffeeville, a daycare in Water Valley and an adult health and wellness center also in Water Valley. He cites two turning points that also helped drive the success.
“The recruitment of Dr. Pratt and the nurse practitioners coming in and helping us share the load,” Dr. Odom notes.
He credits YHS Jessica Embry and the current hospital board as the stabilizing force to keep the operation going through the toughest time since the hospital opened in 1962. Embry was tapped to lead YHS in February, 2020, only weeks before the world would change.
“Jessica has performed unbelievably in the face of Covid. She is doing an amazing job,” he adds.
Dr. Odom added that he has never regretted his decision to leave Florida in 1988 and spend the remainder of his career in Water Valley.
“I was impressed with the people of Water Valley, good people. I was impressed with the good relations between the white and black community – just a real good community to live in. By then I had adopted a little girl in Florida and I wanted to raise her up here in Water Valley. That is another reason I wanted to come back, to have a good community for her. I haven’t regretted it.”
