Dr. Paul Seville has an unusual - but effective - method for getting patients to listen to his medical advice.

If they don't seem to be getting the message, the Hanford urologist takes off his shirt.

That's because his chest and back show scars from more than 30 operations. Two ugly incisions on the left and right sides of his waistline mark where doctors have removed, installed or otherwise tinkered with a grand total of four kidneys, two that came with Seville when he was born and another two transplanted into his body.

It got Ray Verhoeven's attention. The 79-year-old Hanford resident was in the hospital with prostate trouble when Seville told him surgery was needed.

After a few questions from Verhoeven, the shirt came off.

Verhoeven said he was shocked - but also motivated.

"He laid it on the line what he expected. And I followed his orders," Verhoeven said.

Seville is the medical equivalent of a general who fought as a grunt before rising up through the ranks.

He's fought against his body, which came with defective kidneys that had to be removed when he was 12. He's fought battles with a transplanted kidney his body slowly rejected as a foreign invader.

He's fought against himself, trying to move beyond bitterness, self-pity and a rising sense of being agnostic.

He's battled to get the proper treatment, keep himself alive and graduate from medical school.

These days, the urologist who has only been practicing in Hanford for a few months, is fighting the good fight to be a better physician.

"Well, the man has to have compassion for his patients after everything he's been through," Verhoeven said.

The going hasn't been easy.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Seville couldn't urinate because of a blockage in his urethra. One doctor told his mother everything was fine.

It wasn't.

The problem could have been corrected early, he said. By the time his parents figured out what was going on, it was too late to save the kidneys.

Wearing diapers through 5th grade, Seville said schoolmates mocked him mercilessly.

In 1977, he started dialysis and in 1979, when he was 12, both defunct kidneys were removed and replaced by one from somebody who died in a car accident.

Seville said he felt like Superman. He took his medications, ate right, avoided contact sports that might damage the new organ and sailed through high school.

He charged into Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley area in the early 1980s, thinking he would be a physical therapist. But the kidney was slowly deteriorating. His body's immune system was rejecting it as a foreign object despite a lineup of immunosuppressant drugs he swallowed daily.

He fell behind in the program. When he realized how long it was going to take, he decided to go all the way and become a doctor.

Urology seemed like a natural fit.

He ended up at University of California, Davis, where he graduated with a physical education degree and had an emphasis in exercise physiology.

That was followed by four years of medical school at UC Irvine and a urology residency program in Buffalo, N.Y., starting in 1996.

Seville said he was 15 months away from finishing school when the transplant failed, sending him back to dialysis.

Alarms on the machine would repeatedly go off at night, waking him up.

"It was just horrendous," he said.

Unable to finish the program, he returned to live with his family in California. He languished on the waiting list for a kidney as his health deteriorated.

Unbeknownst to him, his older sister was secretly planning to donate one of hers.

After completing a battery of tests to demonstrate that there was a match, Eloisa Mahoney announced her decision.

"I told him, 'You have to do it. You have no choice,'" the sister said with a laugh.

So four years ago, the mother of triplets went into surgery and gave her brother a kidney.

Seville finished his residency in 2005, 13 years after entering medical school. He opened up a practice in Hanford - his first - in August this year.

And in October, he got married.

He and his wife live in Hanford.

Asked how his trials have affected his practice, Seville said his situation has made him more sympathetic.

"I understand pain. I understand needles. I understand suffering. I've been there," he said.

But he's also harder on patients.

Seville said he makes hospital patients get up and walk even when it hurts. His goal is to get them home as soon as possible.

Seville said he's had more than his fill of hospitals and doesn't want to see patients spend any more time there than they have to.

"Medicine's great, but it's far from perfect. You know, we have to always keep getting better. Always," he said.

The reporter can be reached at 582-0471, ext. 3061.

(Dec. 12, 2006)