A blaring ambulance siren and a mellow-toned cello: They hardly make perfect harmony.
But they're the main themes in the life of Nancy Donaruma, who is retiring from the New York Philharmonic to take on another job she loves, as a full-time paramedic.
After 31 years in the top-tier orchestra, playing with conductors like Leonard Bernstein, Zubin Mehta and Lorin Maazel, the 59-year-old cellist will go from a hefty six-figure annual income to a ``low five-figure'' salary.
That's the price she's willing to pay to fulfill her lifetime fascination with medicine.
``I've always had an interest in how the human body works, and doesn't. And I do like taking care of people,'' she said.
Donaruma says her physical skill as a cellist, manual dexterity and quick, supple fingers, ``is good for starting IVs and feeling pulses.''
Other overlapping qualities are the ability ``to be very focused and do something in an immediate fashion _ and not to make any mistakes.''
In the past year, Donaruma has had two chances to practice her medical skills at the Philharmonic. In one case, a string player fainted onstage during a concert; Donaruma helped get the man off the stage and assessed his vital signs while a doctor was called. She also helped another musician who fell while walking off the stage.
Donaruma has been on 60 tours to every continent except Africa. She's even played chamber music for Paul Newman in his Manhattan apartment, a prize he'd won during a Philharmonic fundraiser.
She'll play her last official concert with America's oldest orchestra on Sept. 14 under conductor John Williams.
Her new job will be near her home in upstate Poughkeepsie, where she lives on 14 acres of land with her significant other, a telephone and computer technician.
The divorced mother of two grown children will still be a very busy person.
An avid horseback rider expert at dressage, ``ballet on a thousand pounds,'' she keeps two horses at home, where she also enjoys cooking and growing vegetables and flowers.
She'll keep playing in chamber music groups and solo recitals, performing favorite composers like Beethoven and Brahms. And she'll play for free for her paramedic friends at Alamo EMS.
She has one word for her new job: ``Exciting.''
``You get to move around, you get to be outside, and you never know what is going to happen next. There are a lot of physical challenges,'' like getting a 600-pound patient out of a fourth-floor walk-up apartment on a recent call.
Playing with other musicians and being a paramedic both involve ``a lot of teamwork and creativity,'' she says. ``You have to be very creative in figuring out how to move a patient. You work with a partner, plus police and firefighters. Everyone has a job to do.''
She likes to use a patient's personal surroundings as a diagnostic tool. ``You can learn a lot looking at where a patient lives, who they live with, how they live,'' she says. ``You assess not only their body, but their environment, their mental state.''
Donaruma, an Oklahoma native, had a father who was a violinist, a conductor and a public school teacher. Her mother was a secretary. The family is descended from John Howland, who came to America on the Mayflower. ``He was drunk and fell into the water shortly before the ship docked,'' she says, laughing. ``But he survived to make progeny in the new world.''
For the past several years, she juggled Philharmonic duties with paramedic courses at Dutchess Community College, while working several EMT shifts a month.
Once, as a student, she was watching a surgeon perform a hernia procedure, with music piped into the operating room, a Philharmonic recording.
``So in my peepy little student voice, I said, 'Oh, I'm on that record.' And the surgeon said, 'WHAT are you doing in here?'''
E-Mail Story
Print Story
