Peabody Twin Doctors On Coronavirus Front Lines In New York, Miami
BOSTON (CBS) - Michael and Dennis D'Urso, twin brothers from Peabody, are now both on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic as emergency department doctors in New York and Florida.
Michael D'Urso works at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital and is currently on a four-week assignment at nearby Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center.
His 31-year-old identical twin brother Dennis is at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.
This is the first time they've lived apart, having gone to both college and medical school together. Now, their separate residencies are giving them a chance to form their own identities.
"I just feel like every day you get home and you just want to sit down and let it all out for a few minutes because it is so much more stressful than your regular days of work. But least we had some of residency before this crisis happened so that we got used to a normal routine," Michael said.
Dennis said they're learning lessons from each other. The twins talk on nearly a daily basis.
"From when we were kids we realized we're similarly talented at pretty much everything and kind of having the same interest we were forced to have, you know, active or, you know, more subtle competition in everything. And that still continues. We share things that we learn day to day, we see unique patient cases, share how we responded to them and took care of these patients, or just getting different experiences in different hospitals, and how different programs are training and preparing for this kind of response," Dennis said.
Medicine is a family tradition for the D'Ursos. Their father James worked for 35 years as an emergency doctor and their 28-year-old brother Tom is a technician in the ER at North Shore Medical Center in Salem.
"I feel, you know, hard at times that I can't help them, do more. And you worry about them being in the ER, not only with the COVID-19 out there, but just what they're going to see, how traumatic it's going to be for them," said their mother Linda.
"Every time they call us every day, they kind of vent about all the exciting things they had to go through during the night and the real bad, critical cases and some just very interesting type cases," their father James said. "And I think it's very rewarding when they get off a shift and know that they've taken care of a lot of people, made a big difference in their lives."