As far as I can remember, back when I was five, six years old, remember playing the role of a doctor with my little brother. Like, I always want to be the doctor. Would borrow my dad’s stethoscope, because my dad used to be a physician, so I was always fascinated with that. Then I made some rounds with my dad when I was about 10, 11 years old, and that really got me interested in in medicine. And and from then I knew that was going to be a doctor.
I’m very active in the two societies. One of them is at American Academy of Orthopedic Surgery, and I’m also active in the Scoliosis Research Society. I am involved in in in publishing and trying to advance the field of spine surgery. I actually myself personally also go to other spine surgeons around the country. I go watch him do surgery, because I think you can always learn from people. Even here in LA, and [inaudible] scrubbing with other spine surgeons, because I learned from them.
One of my mentors in medical school one time told me, he said, as you’re going through your career, medicine, the day you stop changing and be just where you are, there’s a day you have, you have killed medicine. So I am doing things differently now than I did when I first started [inaudible] eight years ago. And having gone through close to 2,000 cases, I can tell you what I’m doing now is very different than what I did, you know, in the beginning, the first couple hundred cases, because we get better, you learn new techniques. It’s all about trying to improve patient outcomes.
And when you make a difference in a patient’s life, when they come back, you went from somebody who’s disabled or completely debilitated because the pain is so bad, and you’re able to make a difference and get these people back to a normal functioning level, and the gratitude you’ve seen them, you cannot, that’s priceless. There is no price, no money in the world can replace there. That is something that what I love about what I do.
And then you mix that with the anatomy of it and how you’re working around the nerves, the spinal cord, but also it’s a three-dimensional anatomy, and understanding the the alignment of the spine, on how you’re able to change the alignment, shift the alignment, and these are unbelievable. And it really makes it, I want to soak it in more. I want to learn more and more as time goes on. I want to keep doing this.
