CLIFTON SPRINGS — Dr. Nicholas Day wants to make one thing clear right away — he has always loved his hometown.

That said, when the Midlakes High School graduate was working at Rochester General Hospital several years ago and was asked about going to Clifton Springs Hospital & Clinic, his response was ... well, admittedly less than enthusiastic.

“I said ahhhhhh, I don’t know,” Day — who generally goes by Nick — said with a laugh during a recent phone interview. “I knew it was a small community hospital and that was a big change for me. Part of me thought I would love to come back to the area and treat the people who live here, but I also thought it wouldn’t have the resources and would be too small of a machine.”

His thoughts changed, however, when he went to an interview at the local Rochester Regional Health affiliate hospital.

“While doing a walk-through all of a sudden I thought ‘This just feels right.’ All the time you basically gear up and travel through the world of academia and big hospitals, then downshift and come to a smaller community hospital,” he said. “Clifton is pretty resource rich for being where they are. RRH has brought some amazing providers to this hospital but it still has a community feel and a new energy.”

For Day and his wife Megan, who has a doctorate in physical therapy and is a physical therapist for RRH, they have come full circle since growing up near the village of Clifton Springs and now living in the village. They are 2002 Midlakes grads, began dating as freshmen in 1999 and have been together ever since.

“We are grateful for our education at Midlakes,” Megan said. “We both went there and wanted to live in the district someday, even though we don’t have kids now.”

Megan earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Daemen College near Buffalo while Nick got his undergraduate degree in biology at SUNY New Paltz and went to medical school at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. Megan joined him there, getting a job as a physical therapist at the Syracuse VA Medical Center.

After med school they moved to Ann Arbor, Mich. Nick did his residency in internal medicine at the University of Michigan Hospital while Megan was a physical therapist for the university.

They later moved to Rochester, with Nick doing his three-year gastroenterology fellowship at Strong Memorial Hospital while Megan worked for Lattimore Physical Therapy in Avon. She later took a job with RRH and works primarily at Newark-Wayne Community Hospital, although she will be moving to RRH’s site on County Road 6 in Geneva.

Nick specializes in gastroenterology (digestive system) and hepatology (medicine focusing on the liver) at Clifton Springs, where he has been practicing since 2017. Not surprisingly, some of his patients he knew while growing up.

“Basically not a day goes by that I don’t have contact — even indirectly — with someone I know,” he said.

Megan and Nick also have plenty of family in the area including their parents — Bob and Danita Fox for Megan and Ralph (Joe) and Kim Day for Nick. Their grandparents also live locally.

“I saw my Mom recently and she told me she saw someone who was so happy with the care they got at Clifton. That is nice to hear,” Nick said. “It does feel special and nice to help people and provide this level of care in our community.”

Nick also appreciates walking to work.

“I walk to work five days a week and I don’t take it for granted,” he said. “I don’t have to get the snow off my car. I just put on a pair of boots and walk to work.”