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http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/02/doctor_sees_a_healthy_dose_of.html
FLINT -- She was born before anyone had ever heard the word "vitamin," and she was teaching school by the time the first blood bank was established.
She has witnessed the discoveries of penicillin and DNA, the invention of vaccines from diptheria to cervical cancer, surgical revolutions from the first open-heart surgery to the first kidney transplant, technical breakthroughs from the electron microscope to the birth of the first test-tube baby.
But ask Dr. Toine Rinne why younger physicians and medical students might find her inspiring, she'll just shake her head and sigh.
"I don't know what I have to give them, why they should say they went into this field because of me," said Rinne, chuckling. "Some of the things are
unbelievable they're trying to do in medicine now. I remember when they put in the first artificial heart. Now it's all coming so fast even the doctors have a hard time keeping up."
The retired Flint Osteopathic Hospital pathologist celebrated her 99th birthday this week while attending a medical lecture at Genesys Medical Center's conference center.
Physicians must acquire 50 hours of continuing education credits each year to maintain their license. Rinne typically acquires at least 70, said Sharon Wilson, head of the Genesys continuing education program.
"She only missed one month because she fell and broke her hip. I had to bring her all the handouts and lecture materials because she was so upset she was going to miss this information," said Wilson, laughing. "We have residents and medical students in that audience who are in their 20s and just starting out. They're so impressed that she would continue on like she does."
Rinne's life is a first-person history of the entire 20th century. Born in 1909, she immigrated from Finland as a toddler with her mother in 1910 to join her father -- once a palace guard for Czar Nicholas of Russia -- who came to the U.S. to work as a miner and lumberjack. She grew up in a tiny cabin in the woods of Minnesota and taught school there for 12 years.
Near the end of World War II, the school district's money ran out so she went to Chicago looking for work. She ended up at the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine.
"I had saved up $700. It wasn't enough but the dean said he thought I could handle it," said Rinne. "I was the only woman in a class of ten. They were all war veterans and the nicest boys I ever met. If I didn't have a microscope, they'd get me one."
She almost dropped out in her last year of medical school due to a lack of funds.
"When the boys heard I was going to leave they said, 'You can't leave now. You're the president of our class. We just had a meeting and elected you.' I got as far as the bus station and turned around."
She ended up borrowing $4,000 from her sister and brother-in-law and graduated in 1948.
For the next three years, she worked at Chicago Osteopathic Hospital for $150 a month plus room and board.
"I never married. I worked so hard and it was too hard to have a career and family back then," she said.
She came to Flint in 1952, when Flint Osteopathic was "the bone hospital" in a little building on Third Avenue. The new FOH was built in 1959 on Beecher Road at Ballenger Highway.
"There were doctors who mortgaged their homes to build that hospital. We all contributed money to build it," said Rinne. "It was very sad when it closed. Many of us doctors were very opposed to it."
She's amazed by all the medical advances of the past century - but dismayed by changes in health insurance and prescription drug costs.
"All children should have health care and other people too. We shouldn't be giving our money to foreign countries when our own children can't get care because it's so expensive."
She retired in 1979 but has never tired of continuing her education.
"I'm not qualified to see patients anymore, of course, but in pathology a cancer cell is still a cancer cell. The techniques might change in how to treat it but the cell remains the same," she said. "I only gave up my license for Michigan this year. I'm sure the Lord is going to give my next examination."
