Clinton Lewis/Daily News

Dr. Sean Willgruber was one of those rare youngsters who actually enjoyed going to the doctor. I remember going to the doctor with my mother and asking the doctor questions, said Willgruber, who grew up in Sewickley, Penn., and moved to Bowling Green when he was 13. Ive always wanted to be a doctor. Willgrubers dream came true. He has been a co-owner of Western Kentucky Diagnostic Imaging since January and has been on staff there since July 2001.We do X-rays, ultrasound, CT scans, MRIs, mammography, he said, running down the list of some of the procedures done at the clinic. You have to know a lot about everything. You talk to patients before and after they have surgery, and you get to follow them through the disease process. The knowledge about various topics was what hooked Willgruber into radiology in the first place, he said. You have to be able to talk to doctors, nurses, the staff and patients, plus theres a completion of working through things, he said. Youre able to take the problem from how patients present it to the doctor to whats going on. You can send them in the right direction and, hopefully, they can catch the problem and get it taken care of. Willgruber graduated from Western Kentucky University with a degree in biology and chemistry and went to medical school at the University of Louisville, where he also did his residency. He also did an internship at Mercy Hospital of Pittsburgh. You go to medical school and you think you want to be a general practitioner, he said. The first two years were all book work. Then my first three rotations were pediatrics, surgery and family practice. Willgruber enjoyed all his rotations, but it was while he was doing his surgery rotation in Madisonville that he realized radiology was the career for him. The doctor I was working with turned me on to radiology, he said. It kind of lumped all the practices together. Since he graduated, Willgruber has worked in general medicine at Graves-Gilbert Clinic and as a staff radiologist at Vencor Hospital and University Radiological Associates in Louisville. He now lives in Bowling Green with his wife, Julie, and their children, Emma, 28 months and Jax, 14 months. Being able to help patients is the most gratifying aspect of his career, Willgruber said. I get letters from patients, and I get to find out how theyre doing, he said. Its great. Its the best part of the day.