LEWISTON – His last words to his patients are of thanks – thanks for the lessons that they’ve taught him.

“I’ve learned more from them than I can ever imagine,” said Dr. Oscar Cabatingan during an interview this week.

That’s typical of the man, say those who know Cabatingan best.

“I always joke with him that I know his plumbing and he knows mine,” said Joe D’Amour of Auburn. At 84, D’Amour is one of Cabatingan’s longest-tenured patients.

“I’ve been with him from the start,” said the retired plumber. “I was setting up his first office when I cut my hand. He fixed me up right then and there,” said D’Amour, “and I’ve been with him ever since.”

Ever since, in this case, will be until Dec. 21. That’s when D’Amour has his final visit with Cabatingan. Two days later, the doctor will take his stethoscope from around his neck one final time, then walk out of his office door into retirement.

Patients like D’Amour and partners like Dr. Bill Lee agree that Cabatingan will leave behind a huge gap to be filled.

“I look at Oscar Cabatingan as an unsung hero who has led by example,” said Lee, his longtime associate. “He is a superb clinician, totally committed to his patients. … He was always there for all of us. He will be missed.”

Cabatingan arrived in the Twin Cities in 1971. By 1974 he had formed Mount David Clinical Associates with Dr. Stephen Sokol. In 1977 they were joined by Lee. In 1990, the Mount David group – now comprised of Drs. Cabatingan, Lee, Richard Stephenson and Pamela Ross – joined the newly formed Central Maine Clinical Associates to form Central Maine Internal Medicine. CMIM was one of the region’s first hospital-employed physician groups.

Creating the group, said Cabatingan, was a necessity. “It’s best to work with people who share similar work ethics, who care for patients as you do,” he said. By working side by side with like-minded physicians, he said he always felt that his patients would receive the best of care, from him and from his colleagues.

Cabatingan came to Maine by following a route that led him halfway across the globe.

He was born in the Philippines to a generation once removed from Spanish colonial rule. As a boy he joined his family as they hid in the island nation’s mountains, his father a member of guerrilla forces fighting Japanese invaders during World War II.

One of his earliest memories was joining his mother on monthly forays out of the hills and back into the city to collect rent from the family’s tenants.

Once, he recalled, a Japanese patrol intercepted them. They were held for a day or so – “a frightening time” – but later freed unharmed.

His family wasn’t wealthy, he noted, but comfortably middle class. In the Philippines, such comfort was little more than a dream for many people.

But, he said, it was because he grew up and played with the children of the family’s tenants that he realized he enjoyed some privilege. As he grew older, he said, he began to realize that he wanted to find a way to help those who had less.

Medicine became that way.

Cabatingan graduated from the University of the Philippines and earned his medical degree from the University of the East, Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center, Quezon City.

In the Philippines he completed residencies specializing in obstetrics, delivering hundreds of babies in slum hospitals.

He also completed residencies at hospitals in Michigan and trained in Boston and Cincinnati. He took up specialties in internal medicine and pulmonary care. The latter resulted in Cabatingan helping develop Central Maine Medical Center’s Critical Care Unit and Respiratory Therapy Department. He was medical director of respiratory therapy from 1972 until the late 1980s, and also served as CMMC’s chief of medical staff.

“I had thought of returning to the Philippines” before moving to Maine, he said, but family members still living in the Pacific discouraged the move.

“There was fear of where the Philippines were going under Marcos,” he said. “Some saw the Phillipines and Marcos as another Cuba and Castro.”

Then one day, while caring for a woman from Maine at a Boston hospital, he said her husband offered him a copy of Downeast Magazine.

“It reported on the megalopolis from Portsmouth, Va., to Portsmouth, N.H.,” he said. “I thought that north of Portland might be better.”

Once he arrived in Maine he said he was welcomed by people like his neighbor, Fred Bockus, who started unloading his van after a handshake and a few words of welcome.

“We used to joke that there was a traffic jam if there were more than three cars at a time on the bridge,” he said.

Cabatingan said he loves practicing medicine because it offered opportunities for him to meet and help people.

“It’s wonderful,” he said, to be able to help someone who is ill or suffering.

By the same token, he noted, sometimes he couldn’t heal the sick. “You look into their eyes,” he said, “and you can see their spirit. You can feel their pain, and you want to help them …”

And sometimes, he said, there were little miracles that made the practice that much more rewarding.

He recalled one that occurred shortly after he began practicing in the Twin Cities.

“This young woman – 15, 16 years old – came in. She was pregnant and obviously dispirited,” he said.

There was talk of abortion.

“I promised her that if she would keep the baby I would stay with her through the process.”

She did.

And for years after that, Cabatingan said, the mother would send him a picture of her child so he could keep track of its growth.

Now, the doctor says it’s time for him to do something new – catch up on his reading – and begin a new “spiritual journey with my wife” Connie.

He’ll soon visit a son living in Rhode Island, then take time to visit a daughter in Costa Rica. He’ll revel in the joy that grandchildren bring to grandparents, he said, and also find time to renew acquaintances with two sisters who still live in the Philippines.

While his partners and patients will wish him well, they’ll also miss him.

As Joe D’Amour says, “I’m kinda sorry to see him go.”