by Jaime R. Garza, MD
This is really the kind of work I love. It’s not enough to rebuild a lip to work normally,
... it should also look normal.
When the alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m., a 14-hour day lies ahead of me. It’s not bad, considering I used to get up at 4:30 a.m. to dash off to trauma rooms at University Hospital here in San Antonio and in Pittsburgh.
Now that I’m working as a plastic surgeon in private practice, the hours are a bit more family friendly.
Before I run out the door, I’ll take time to eat breakfast with my two school-age kids (another daughter and son are in college), visit with my wife and check my e-mail. On this day, I’m getting updates on the status of my new Plastic Surgery Center and Stadia Medical Spa, a 6,000 square foot state-of-the-art medical facility and medical spa that will serve as my home base after it opens in November.
Next, I review the renderings sent from the West Coast architect who specializes in designing medical spas, and is working on the plans for Stadia and my offices at the Texas Plastic Surgery Center. I make a note to meet with a local architect to discuss construction details, and finally I send my feedback to the West Coast, kiss my wife good-bye and head off to the operating room.
The operating day starts at 7:30 a.m. at Methodist Hospital, where I perform a lower lip reconstruction on a skin cancer patient. This time, it’s a referral from head-and-neck cancer surgeon Dr. Richard Newman. This is a tag-team effort. Dr. Newman performs a resection, and I’m rebuilding the lower lip using local tissue with a series of incisions to move tissue around, combining esthetic principles with reconstruction principles.
This is really the kind of work I love. It’s not enough to rebuild a lip to work normally, but it should also look normal. It’s a procedure that combines skills I learned in head-and-neck surgery training at LSU in New Orleans, M.D. Anderson in Houston and in my plastic surgery training at the University of Pittsburgh.
At 9:30 I leave the Methodist to head to the Center for Special Surgeries, an outpatient surgery center at Babcock and Medical owned by the same group of physicians involved in building the Texas Center for Athletes. I’m heading into a 10 a.m. surgery for one of my bread-and-butter cosmetic procedures, a rhinoplasty, with an upper-eyelid blepharoplasty. Things go smoothly, so I follow this with another patient who has a liposuction procedure for her thighs and abdomen.
This goes well, and I’m in a good mood as I head off to Christus Santa Rosa Northwest Hospital to make rounds during the lunch hour. Like many surgeons, I eat in-between surgeries, grabbing a quick meal from the hospital cafeteria – today it’s a chicken salad sandwich.
The rounds are fairly routine, so I’m actually on schedule when I head across the driveway to my office. The afternoon, from 1 to 5 p.m., is spent visiting with several patients for evaluations for rhinoplasty, eyelid and face lift surgery, skin care, breast augmentation and liposuction.
I check on my nurse esthetician as she is performing a laser hair removal procedure. She has a question about a possible skin cancer on the patient. The skin lesion appears to be benign and she continues the laser hair removal.
Things are pretty normal, but at 2:30 p.m. my nurse gets a call from a trainer at a local college. One of his athletes has fractured his nose and cheekbone during practice, and they’re hoping I can work him into the schedule. I move things around to see the emergency a little after 4 p.m.
Afterwards, I tell the young man that we will schedule surgery to repair the broken bones in about a week, once the swelling goes down. I tell him that it’s very likely that we can minimize the deformity so no one will ever know anything ever happened to his face and that he will be able to participate in sports again after he has healed.
After 5 p.m., I have a quick staff meeting to go over the next day’s schedule. Then, it’s time for paperwork -- signing and filling out charts, order sheets and prescriptions.
At 6:15 p.m., I’m on the phone for a job interview with an esthetician for the new medical spa I mentioned earlier. The interview goes off smoothly, and I’m excited about the prospect of putting together a great staff for this new venture.
Then, at 6:30 p.m., I run over to the Huebner Medical Building for an owners’ meeting of the Texas Center for Athletes. I’m one of 14 physician owner/ investors. We meet with the project manager, contractors from Koontz McCombs and architects. The update they provide is nothing but good news: The project looks to be on time and on budget. It looks like the center will open as planned in November.
At about 8 p.m., I call my wife and tell her I’m coming home. Lisa has dinner ready for me, and I’m grateful every time for the wonderful meal with my family. My son, 14-year-old Carlo, tells me about his football practice at Clark High School, while 7-year-old Cristian is equally excited to fill me in on his after-school adventure during youth soccer practice.
After dinner, I check my e-mail for my regular “Good night. How was your day?”e-mail from my grown kids. Jaime is a 19-year-old freshman majoring in business communications at DePauw University. Sevilla, who turns 21 in December, is studying advertising at the University of Texas at Austin. Sometimes, they need a little encouragement, so I’ll fire off an inspirational story about a patient, or someone in history. It helps to keep them motivated. We all need that motivation sometimes.
At 10:30, I visit with my architect – my wife, Lisa. She’s reviewing her current design plans for our dream home, which she’s designing and building for us.
It’s almost time for bed, and 6:30 a.m. will be here before I know it. But I have no complaints; it’s a good life.
I’m doing what I love, helping my patients achieve their goals, and then I get to come home to the people I love most in my life. I know I’m a lucky and very blessed man.
Dr. Garza is a plastic surgeon practicing in San Antonio who is opening a new plastic surgery center and medical spa partnership this month.
