The "Why"

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Everything you'll find online, and even what you'll find below this section reads like a resume. What I tell you here is a personal story, and my why. 

I was a medical student on my general surgery rotation when I watched a young woman with breast cancer change the way I thought about medicine.

She was young, younger than you'd expect for a breast cancer diagnosis. And she needed a mastectomy. The general surgeon did his part: removed the breast including the tumor, cleared the margins, and did what needed to be done. Then the plastic surgeon came in and did his part: the reconstruction, the rebuild, the work that gave the breast back its form.

And I watched this woman fall asleep that morning feeling like a woman with breasts and wake up cancer free, feeling like a woman with breasts.

Two things locked in for me in that moment that I haven't let go of since.

The first was what I was watching happen for her. She didn't have to choose between treating her cancer and keeping her body. She went to sleep and she woke up, and both things had been taken care of. I had never thought about surgery that way before as something that could address both the disease and the person experiencing it at the same time.

The second was a decision I made about what kind of surgeon I wanted to be.

I didn't want to be the general surgeon who hands off to the plastic surgeon. I didn't want to be the plastic surgeon waiting for the case to finish before his part begins. I wanted to be both: the surgeon who removes the cancer and the surgeon who restores the breast, in the same room, in the same operation, as one unified plan. One surgeon who stays with the patient from the first incision to the last stitch. One less handoff. One less step. One less person the patient has to trust her body to.

That is not a small thing when you are a woman lying on an operating table facing a breast cancer diagnosis.

That moment in medical school became the north star of how I trained, what credentials I pursued, and ultimately why I built the practice I built in Bowling Green. The dual board certification general surgery and cosmetic surgery is not a collection of achievements. It is the answer to a question I asked myself as a student watching two surgeons do separately what I believed could be done together.

There is a second thing that drives this practice, and it is harder to explain but equally true.

Breast cancer does not just affect the breast. It affects the way a woman sees herself, the way she moves through the world, the relationship she has with her own body. The oncologic outcome removing the cancer is necessary. It is not sufficient. A woman who is cancer free but whose body no longer feels like hers has not been fully cared for. She has been treated. There is a difference.

Oncoplastic surgery the integration of cancer surgery and aesthetic technique into one operation exists because someone recognized that difference and decided to close it. I practice it because I believe it is the right standard of care, not an optional upgrade.

The Men Wear Pink campaign started the same way. Not as a marketing strategy. Not as a brand decision. As a conviction. Breast cancer affects the women in every community I have ever been part of patients, family members, people I care about. Wearing pink every day from my scrubs to my shoes to my pens is not a gesture. It is a daily reminder, visible to every patient who walks into my office and every person I pass in the hallway, that this disease is personal to me. That I am not just the surgeon who treats it. I am someone who takes it seriously enough to show up for it in every way I know how.

That is the practice. That is why it exists the way it exists. And that is the kind of surgeon I want to be for every patient who walks through my door.