Mark Marinescu
Age: 39
Occupation: Critical Care Cardiologist / Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of Rochester.
Hobbies: Sailing, Cycling, Water Sports, Wood Working, Generally Fixing Broken Things (Humans or Machines)
A Bit About Me
I was born in New York, NY to immigrant parents who fled communist Romania to start a new life in the United States. When arriving to the US, my mother worked in a factory while my father, an engineer by training, studied for his licensing exams. After he was licensed, my parents moved to the suburbs of Long Island. My father subsequently held various jobs in the field of civil engineering. Most notably, he worked on the renovations of the Statue of Liberty, the containment of heavy water after the Three Mile Island disaster, and the extension of the Long Island RailRoad into Grand Central Station.
I initially struggled in elementary school, likely a function of language difficulties (my first language was Romanian). This prompted my parents to enroll me in Catholic elementary and then high school. I attended Chaminade, a Catholic high school in Mineola, NY. During high school I worked at a local wildlife preserve doing live animal shows and enjoyed cycling.
During residency, I would dress up as Santa Claus every year and give gag gifts to those residents left to staff the hospital
Even years after residency our classmates still get together for group family vacations. Here we are in Iceland.
After graduating high school, I was accepted to the State University of New York, College of Geneseo where I received my bachelors in Science (cum laude) in biochemistry. While in undergrad, I started working for the Geneseo Fire Department and for Geneseo First Response, and I became a training Lieutenant. I served at various EMS agencies, putting in nearly 40 hours per week. This included a summer spent working as a Park Ranger/EMT for the National Park Service.
Initially, I did not want anything to do with medicine. However, my work with the fire department and EMS fostered a desire for lifelong service that lead me to seek a career in healthcare.
​
After college, I matriculated to medical school at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, where I met my wife, Ponnila. We actually met studying and unbeknownst to me, she had a secret crush on me. A friend of a friend from undergrad bought a house and was looking for roommates, and Ponnila and I decided to move in. It took a while for us to start dating--this was primarily because Ponnila was so nice, it would be impossible to break up with her; so I had to be sure I would be ok marrying her first. We have now been happily married for nearly 13 years.
After medical school, we were both off to residency, where we couples-matched to the University of Virginia (UVA) in Charlottesville VA. It was a bit of a whirlwind between medical school and residency: We got married, closed on a house in Virginia, and started intern year at UVA in the same week! We also brought our first dog, Myla with us. Residency was the hardest experience of my life, but my co-residents became my chosen family, and they remain so to this day. I finished my internal medicine training and then worked for a year as a hospitalist at a community hospital in rural western Virginia while waiting for Ponnila to finish her residency training in OBGYN.
​
After completing my hospitalist year, I matched to THE Ohio State University for a three year fellowship in Cardiology. I loved living in Columbus, OH where I continued cycling but also took up what has become one of my greatest life passions, sailing. Central Ohio might not seem like the best place in the world to learn how to sail; however, when I turned 30, I realized that if I did not aggressively pursue the things I wanted to accomplish, life would quickly pass me by. So, I bought a small sailboat on Craigs List and started sailing in the local reservoirs. I also started racing to hone my skill.
During residency and cardiology fellowship, I became acutely aware of a gap in current medical training regarding the management of acutely ill cardiovascular patients. I decided that if cardiologists wanted to manage patients in the cardiac ICU, additional training was needed. In spite of advice against pursuing critical care training, I opted to do a fellowship in Critical Care Cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic. This decision was doubly hard as Ponnila was starting her own advanced training program at the University of Rochester, meaning we would need to be apart. In the end, I was glad to join a small group of dual certified physicians in both Cardiology and Critical Care Medicine.
​
After completing training, I joined my wife back at the University of Rochester, where I was hired as a Critical Care Cardiologist. In Rochester, I continued to grow my passion for sailing, and we bought our big boat, Equus Luna. In Rochester, we live on the Erie Canal. We turned our first 16 foot sail boat into a canal boat that we use to visit villages along the canal, restaurants and breweries. I also have a penchant for working wood and built woodworking shop in our basement.
The only thing lacking has been the ability to grow our family. We have spent the past 10 years trying to have our own children to no avail. I would love to be able to share my experiences, history, love, and time with our future children.
Cruising the southern shore of Lake Ontario, Ponnila is scanning the horizon for our next port of call, Fairhaven.