Catching Up With ...
        Basketball coach Mike Downs (June 14)
        Original Orangeman Daunte Gouge (June 28)
        Olympic long jumper Sherron Walker (July 12)
        English teacher in Russia, Sydney Benson (July 19)

SEATTLE – It's said that the best way to make God laugh is to tell Him your plans.

If that's true, He must have been rolling on the Heavenly floor when Doug Backous arrived at Seattle Pacific in 1980.

Backous had plans, all right. But in his case, it wasn't plans of what to do, as much as it was plans of what not to do.

"I went to SPU with the stated objective of no medical school, no dental school, and no law school," Backous said. "I wanted to be in and out in four years and play soccer.

"I wanted to find a way through the curriculum where I could succeed."

He was in and out in four years. He did play soccer for the Falcons all four years. He found a way through the curriculum that led him down a path …

… toward medical school.

So much for plans.

"If you listen to the Lord," Backous said, "He guides you where you don't want to go."

Today, Backous is one of the country's most highly regarded ear, nose, and throat doctors, specializing in neurotology – surgery and treatment of hearing loss, chronic ear disease, and brain tumors involving the skull base.

"I spent a lot of time as a young man praying for the Lord's guidance of what I wanted to do," Backous said. "I came up with a phrase:

"Be careful what you pray for."

ENGINEERING NUMBERS DID NOT COMPUTE
While medical school wasn't on Backous' radar as an 18-year-old SPU freshman, soccer and engineering were.

On the pitch, he was a standout defender, scoring nine goals in four years and earning first-team honors in the Northwest Collegiate Soccer Conference. After Backous and the Falcons missed the playoffs in 1982, snapping the team's streak of 11 straight NCAA appearances, they roared back the following year to win the second of the school's five national championships.

"It was fun to be part of that and fun to be a captain," recalled Backous, who co-winner of SPU's Ron Grady Athlete of the Year Award in 1984.

In nominating him for that award, former Falcons coach Cliff McCrath wrote, "Not only did he provide inspirational leadership on the field, but he stood tall (and stands tall) as a campus leader who at no point has compromised his standards or expression of Christian faith."

While helping to engineer some soccer success, Backous' initial educational inclination was toward that same thing – engineering – until a math class altered his thinking.

"I took calculus and realized I wasn't an engineer," Backous said.

It was at the suggestion of one of his soccer teammates – Dan Pingrey, who today serves as an assistant on Falcon coach Mark Collings' staff – that Backous started taking biology classes.

Before long – contrary to all of his previous educational plans – Backous was on his way to medicine

"I got a work study job, and was taking care of this patient with Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS)," he said. "I'm taking anatomy and physiology and taking care of this gentleman who was paralyzed from this disease.

"Then I realized I could have an enormous impact as a doctor."

A 13-YEAR TREK
From pre-med to M.D. is the longest of educational roads. It was no different for Backous.

After completing the pre-med program at SPU and graduating in 1984 with a 3.7 grade-point average, Backous went to medical school at the University of Washington. That four-year program stretched to five because he engaged in an additional year of research.

From there, it was six years of residency in otolaryngology (head and neck surgery) at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Finally, a two-year fellowship at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore that concluded in 1997. Along the way, Backous published two papers and won a national research award for basic sciences.

It was in a class at med school that he developed his interest in what ultimately became his specialty.

"During anatomy class, I found it really enjoyable to dissect around the face and ear," he said.

Now, Backous spends 2-2 ½ days a week in the operating room, and the rest of the time in clinic at Swedish Medical Center's Cherry Hill campus in Seattle's Central District. He also does a considerable amount of teaching.

"I have a passion for teaching," he said. "I realized I could do this and still teach what I do."

While everyone has their own definition of a good day at work, Backous said his best ones are "when I do something out of the ordinary. It's glorifying God in the process. I didn't do that – God used me for that."

IT'S ALL ABOUT PEOPLE
Those who come through his door on the fifth floor of the James Tower at Cherry Hill are there primarily as patients. But Backous, guided by his strong faith values, never forgets that first and foremost, they're people.

"The best part of medicine is to take care of people. And the hardest part of medicine is to take care of people," he said. "I'm able to touch a lot of lives, and have a lot of lives touch me."

Backous recalls a group of soccer teammates whose approach and mindset struck a strong chord back then and still resonates with him three decades later.

"There were five or six guys who, just because the team was so strong, rarely got to play," he said. "They sat on the bench and founded a group called the Pine Patrol. They were unbelievably engaged. I could go to the bench at halftime and talk to these guys who weren't playing but were watching the game, and they helped me make corrections in how I was marking my man.

"They gave us this incredible lift."

Backous often remembers that when talking to patients.

"I have to be able to see through their fears and pain and discomfort. And sometimes, I have to give them information that they don't want to hear," he said. "It kind of goes back to the Pine Patrol."

He also believes that helping one patient is helping a much larger group at the same time.

"Every person represents a whole community that they belong to," he said. "If you help Mom, the whole family feels better. If you help a kid, he might go on to help 500 other people."

ONCE A FALCON, ALWAYS A FALCON
Seattle Pacific. Washington. Baylor. Johns Hopkins. Backous could have strong loyalties to a lot of different schools, but doesn't hesitate to say where his loyalties really are.

"People ask me if I'm a Husky or a Cougar. But I say I'm a Bird. My allegiances are to my university," he said.

Backous is married to former Falcon distance runner Julie Lindberg, and they are parents to 21-year-old Taylor (who currently plays men's soccer for SPU), 17-year-old Jonathan, and 14-year-old daughter Lindsey. Doug just finished his third year on the Seattle Pacific Board of Trustees, a position he calls "very challenging and very enjoyable."

"It's fun to be in a room where there are three or four people who are smarter than you are," he said.

For the past two years, Backous, who joined Swedish Medical Center in 2010, has been voted one of Seattle's top doctors in surveys published by Seattle magazine and Seattle Met magazine.

He also has been named one of the Best Doctors in America as recognized by peers within his specialty, a distinction he finds particularly meaningful because "that's a real measure of success in the eyes of your colleagues."

Quite the accomplishment – for a guy who had no plans to go to medical school.

"We may never know how God has used us," he said. "It comes down to a powerful Winston Churchill quote: 'The measure of a man is not so much what he has done for the people he knows, but what he has done for people he has never met by working for the people he knows.'

"It's like my personal mission statement."

Nobody's laughing about that.

But chances are, God just might be nodding in approval.