About & Consultations

I am available for the following consultations, contact at ssmdmba@gmail.com:

Meditation - What is it? How do you do it? Why everyone especially health providers should be doing it.

Life in Medicine - Managing career and life expectations, adjustments, health, disability, raising kids as a physician.

Career Counseling & Mentoring - For med students, residents, junior faculty, physicians.

Surgical Mentoring - Discussing cases, dealing with the mental side of surgery.

2nd opinions - Patient education, physician referrals, &c.

Industry work - Research monitoring, CRO, program development


About Me. . . . 

I grew up a California native, attended UCLA for my undergraduate training, then UC Davis for medical school. I complete my residency training in ophthalmology at Stanford University then specialized in retinal surgery at William Beaumont Hospital in Michigan. I moved to Orlando in 2003 where my first job out of fellowship was with a local private practice where I established small-gauge microinvasive vitreoretinal surgery in Orlando by setting up the local operating rooms and proctoring several local physicians in the technique and taken part in several interesting local cases including a well-publicized surgical repair of a blind 2-year-old war victim brought to the United States, and specifically Orlando. 

After a few years in private practice, and an MBA in healthcare management, I transitioned to the public non-profit sector as one of the founding faculty at the UCF College of Medicine and staff vitreoretinal surgeon at the Orlando VA Hospital. I've stayed in academic practice and been responsible for numerous local medical education precedents having established several local ophthalmology residency affiliations and the region’s first retina fellowship, and I also serve as educational chair of ophthalmology at the UCF College of Medicine. Many of my trainees have gone on to have outstanding careers in the specialty I also enjoy volunteering in international telemedicine where I've served for many years as an Orbis and Doctors without Borders consultant for complex eye cases. I hold numerous local and national university professorships and have written several books, book chapters, and over 50 academic papers, and my current research interests include artificial intelligence and nanoparticle work in the UCF Department of Engineering.

I have a special interest in mindfulness and humanity in medicine and have taught several of my trainees to meditate. There is a deep spiritual truth in the patient-healer relationship and the practice of healing is an art, passed on from one healer to another, generation after generation, and for those who appreciate it, the journey of a lifetime. I have gone through my own personal and medical struggles as I have a primary immunodeficiency (selective IgM immunodeficiency syndrome  which I had to diagnose myself as it was missed by most doctors), have been on the other end of the knife too many times, immunoglobulin infusions every two weeks, and yet still in wonder of the mystery of life and the human condition.

You only get one life. What's the purpose of it? Why do we think the way we do? How do we live a "good" life, now and to the very end? Questions we should all ask ourselves. 

p.s. If I don't answer right away, I am either at the gym, doing yoga, taking salsa lessons or traveling. No financial or medical advice will be provided. Any second opinions will be offered through the telemedicine platforms I participate in.


Popular posts from this blog

Twenty Years Ago Today. A Vision of Hope

Image
  Twenty years ago today, this  article  was published about a surgery I performed on a two-year-old girl named Alaa, a child blinded by war. Shrapnel from an American tank shell—fired on a children’s birthday party mistaken for an insurgent gathering—killed most of her cousins and family members. It left Alaa with a torn abdomen and filled her eyes with metal fragments that would rust and poison her ocular tissue. At the time, a local law student, Ashley Severance, contacted me at my private practice, asking if I could help. The surgeon originally scheduled to remove Alaa’s eyes had backed out—fearful, in that post-9/11 era, that saving this child might be seen as aiding the enemy rather than helping a fellow human being. I knew I had to try. If it were my child, I would want someone to do everything possible. father told me, “It’s not fair that a young child will never get to see her mother again.” He was told to let her die—her...
Read more

Beyond Understanding: Grokking the Reality Beyond Words.

Image
Elon  Musk’s AI startup, announced in July 2023, claims to seek “to understand the true nature of the universe,” according to its website. While this ambition is intriguing, it mirrors a timeless quest—one that sages and philosophers, have embarked on long before Musk. Case in point, the Buddha. The paradox, however, is that the true nature of the universe cannot be understood by “trying” to understand it. The act of understanding depends on a matrix of symbols, concepts, and language—constructs of the human mind, or what is referred to in eastern metaphysics as Maya. Any search for meaning within these frameworks is inherently limited by them. Kurt Gödel demonstrated in his incompleteness theorems that no system can explain itself entirely; it can only be understood by stepping beyond it. The same applies to our conceptual descriptions and models of reality. In much the same way, to truly grasp the universe, we must transcend the conceptual systems w...
Read more

Time to Mate. Love in the Serengeti.

Image
That morning, deep in the Serengeti, as I ventured out on a walking safari to witness the great wildebeest migration, I joked with my guide that I felt the urge to "mark my territory," so that lions knew who’s king of the jungle, or in this case savannah. He laughed, and we wandered, stepping into the vast wilderness on foot. As we walked, we spotted a male lion resting with two females in the distance. My guide nudged me, saying, “Let’s go, it’s getting late.” But I had a feeling something was about to happen. “No, let’s wait a bit longer,” I said, keeping my eyes on the scene. The lions stirred. I noticed them gazing intently toward the bush in the distance, where I could see rustling through my binoculars. The male and his lead lioness got up, walking in the direction of the movement. Then, from afar, another lioness approached—likely a new member of the pride. The male without hesitation left his mate behind and lay down, waiting. And then, ...
Read more