As a surgeon, I spend a great deal of time discussing technical topics and medical perspectives.  I love what I do, but I don’t want to limit myself to being defined by my career.  I hope to be known as a great person, not just a great surgeon. So I wanted this post to give you a glimpse of who I am, after hours…

A couple years ago, my wife Beverly and I took a trip to India.  The doctors were hungry to learn how they could better care for their patients and I have to admit it was incredible to experience such an earnest desire to learn.  I was able to teach new surgical procedures to Indian doctors and Bev trained the nurses on the latest techniques.

It was awesome to be able to share that experience with my wife.  Bev was actually my surgical scrub nurse for a number of years when I first opened my practice, and she continues to work in other areas of the practice today.  Many couples find it challenging to work together, but we believe it has strengthened our marriage in some ways.  When we come home from work and talk about our day, we “speak the same language”.  We’ve always had a lot of synergy and work very well together.  And that synergy carries over to the kitchen!

We enjoy golf and boating on occasion, but cooking is definitely one of our favorite pastimes.  We have yet to take a cooking class, but we love to find new recipes in trendy cookbooks or online. Dinner time is always exciting at our place as we rarely prepare the same meal twice.  We absolutely love Mediterranean food and many weekends we’ll spend hours preparing a meal.  For the holidays we often turn down invitations because we’d much rather do the cooking ourselves and it’s typical for us to have several friends and neighbors over for dinner in addition to our family!

Continuing the new-found family tradition of a career in medicine, our daughter, Christina is currently attending an accelerated nursing program at NYU, expected to graduate in this year.  I couldn’t be more proud of her…well, maybe just a little – if she chooses a specialty in eyecare!