Dr. Judy Rigby, a neonatologist at Kalispell Regional Medical Center, couldn't be happier with her medical home of more than a year.

"The nurses are just wonderful and the administration is so supportive," she said. "When they asked me to stay on permanently in February 2010, I just couldn't say no."

Rigby has worked at many locations in the South and North. She said she has never practiced in a place where there was as much cooperation and willingness to try new approaches.

"The work ethic here is incredible," Rigby said. "The nurses don't complain. They're willing to work any shift and they just work so hard."

A pillow and blanket on the couch in her office attest to the dedication Rigby feels for the tiny lives who depend on her expertise to keep breathing.

In spite of the long hours, responsibility and stress, she has no regrets about choosing a career in medicine. Rigby knew from an early age that she wanted to become a physician.

In an era when girls aspired to become nurses or teachers, she was breaking new ground for women while she was Judy Ann Jackson doing rounds on playgrounds of Pleasant Grove, Utah.

"My mother saved some things from the first grade that I had written about wanting to become a doctor," she said.

Just over 5 feet tall with elegantly upswept hair, Rigby speaks in soft, gentle tones perfect for a nursery of napping premature and ill babies. Her diminutive size and compassionate face come packaged with a strong will to succeed that has served her well in her long career.

"I'm short but determined," she said with a laugh.

She credits a heritage of strong women like her great grandmother, who was trained as a nurse midwife by one of the first women doctors to come to Utah. Her great grandmother practiced into her 80s and apparently after getting gored by a bull.

"She wrote in her journal ‘I was never quite as strong after that,'" Rigby said.

In 1967 when Rigby started at the University of Utah medical school, there had not been a female student for 10 years. She was one of four to start that year.

By the time she graduated from medical school in 1971, Rigby had selected pediatric cardiology as a specialty and married fellow medical student David Rigby, an aspiring radiologist. Her father, who died when she was just 11, inspired her interest in cardiology.

In childhood, he had rheumatic fever that left his heart damaged, a condition correctable now by surgery.

"He died a year before they started doing open-heart surgery," she said.

At graduation, Rigby first learned that her father, who worked for Union Pacific Railroad, had always wanted to become a doctor. She and her husband were about to fulfill his dream as they started internships at the Medical College of Georgia.

They chose the school for its excellent programs in pediatric cardiology and radiology. It was a bittersweet moment for both mothers of the couple as they left Utah.

"We broke our mothers' hearts moving to Georgia," Rigby said. "We both were the oldest in our families."

She admits to a bit of culture shock moving from the ivory tower of medical school in Utah to front-line medicine in Augusta, Ga. Rigby said she ran between two hospitals in a rough neighborhood as an intern and resident in pediatric cardiology.

"If you had a white coat on, they would never bother you," she said. "The same was true in the emergency room. They would take good care of you."

By the time she finished her internship, residency and a fellowship, Rigby said she was completely ready to practice medicine.

"You know what to do and you've done it many times," she said.

The couple had added their son Russell, now a successful patent attorney, to their family when they moved to North Dakota in 1978. Rigby grew to admire the local people.

"The people of North Dakota are the most hardworking, stoic people," she said.

While there, Rigby had the opportunity in Grand Forks to work with Dr. David Driscoll of the Mayo Clinic and Dr. James Moller of the University of Minnesota, both well-known in the field of pediatric cardiology. They came to hold special clinics and became her friends and consultants on difficult cases.

"It was a wonderful working relationship," she said. "The babies got such good care."

She and David moved south again in 1986 to Kentucky. After a few years practicing in Madisonville, Rigby decided to retire for a few years when her son was a junior in high school.

"Then the University of Kentucky in Lexington called," she said. "At 47, I did a neonatology fellowship."

Rigby said with a laugh that she always tells people that she had lost her mind, going back to school at that age. But, once again, her determination along with good health got her through the long nights and hard work normally done at a younger age.

She found her pediatric cardiology came in handy and yet sometimes conflicted with practices in neonatology.

"I had to tiptoe and keep my mouth shut," she said. "I knew when I finished it was going to be much easier to find a (neonatology) hospital position outside academic medicine."

The couple went on to practice in Wisconsin and Eastern Kentucky before moving to Duluth, Minn., where her husband became ill. Although he took excellent care of himself and his type 1 diabetes, he went into renal failure and died at 61 in 2008.

Rigby found the loss devastating after 37 happy years of marriage. She wondered how she could even practice without him.

"He was my best friend and a brilliant radiologist," she said. "I always had him on the other end of the phone. Radiologists get very good at leading you down the right path."

To leave the sad memories behind, Rigby became a locum tenens physician serving in Minnesota and other areas including Kalispell Regional Medical Center. At various locations, she worked in general pediatrics as well as helped set up a nursery.

"I was all over the place for a year and a half," she said. "I was so busy that it pulled me out of the sadness."

In late 2009, she came to Kalispell to interview to join Dr. Cynthia Edstrom in neonatology at Kalispell Regional Medical Center. By the time she got here, Edstrom had decided to leave to take care of some family obligations.

Rigby stepped up to fill the void.

"I was working by myself every day and night," she recalled. "We had six sets of twins in December and January. The census really went up."

Although it was hard work, she found she loved the working environment enough to accept a permanent position. Rigby was pleasantly surprised to find no strong ego dominating the decision-making.

"It's so refreshing to find people who just care about what's best for the babies," she said.

Rigby said it was so important to her when the administration agreed to purchase expensive equipment that she could not even guarantee they would ever need for the neonatal intensive care unit. The oscillator, a special ventilator, soon played a critical factor in saving the life of a 35-week-old baby.

"We would never have had time to fly him to one of the other centers," she said. "He's a bouncing 6-month-old now."

Because of the staff, administrative support and equipment, Rigby said the hospital has a higher than statistically expected survival rate of infants. The neonatal intensive care unit now safely cares for babies at 28 weeks, down from 32 weeks when she started.

She marvels at the advances in her field since the late 1800s when the infant mortality rate was 50 percent. Even in the 1970s, she said 34-week-old premature babies usually didn't survive.

In 1999 as she finished her fellowship, Rigby remembers 24-week-old babied delivered by C-section often died before they reached the nursery.

"Now, 24-weekers can make it," she said.

With another neonatologist, Dr. Marshall Dressel, now on staff, Rigby spends fewer nights catnapping on her couch. At nearly 65, she said she can still go all day and night, just not five days and nights in a row.

She expects to work another 7 to 10 years at Kalispell Regional Medical Center.

"With this hospital's nurses and administration and the quality they care about - this is the best place for me to leave something behind," Rigby said.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.