Bio
I chose vitreoretinal surgery in a very serendipitous way... after all, how many people have ever even heard of the word, "vitreous".
It happened in my third year of medical school, right before the "critical" decision time, when you must decide irrevocably (it seems) what kind of doctor you want to be for the rest of your life. My best friend from my Stanford undergraduate days called me and asked my advise on whether she should undergo a 3rd surgery to repair her detached retina. I barely knew what a retinal detachment was let alone advise her on such an important decision. The next day I went to the registrars office and completely changed my rotation schedule to fit in Ophthalmology. To make a long story short... I found my calling... fortune in the most unfortunate of circumstances. I consider myself one of the luckiest people on earth - to be doing what I love to do every day.
After finishing my fellowship training in vitreoretinal surgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in NYC, I moved to Maine, a place I have known and loved since childhood. My intent was to stay a few years then move back to the Bay Area where I was raised. Nine years later, having built a highly regarded, cutting-edge vitreoretinal private practice, I didn't want to leave but California summoned by way of my family, and a fiancé (based in Silicon Valley) to whom I am now blissfully married.
After returning to California, I joined Scripps Clinic in La Jolla to help them start from scratch, a vitreoretinal practice that utilized the cutting-edge research performed at the adjacent Scripps Research Institute. This lead to my role as Principal Investigator in several national clinical trials for the treatment of diabetic retinopathy and macular degeneration.
Although I was thrilled by my work and the research I was conducting, I realized that it was quickly swallowing up my other roles as wife and mother (to my toddler son). I therefore made another life-changing decision: I decided to join Kaiser Permanente in Santa Rosa because I wanted to achieve the balance that I have been looking for all these working years: to be the finest vitreoretinal surgeon I can be, to work in an excellent, cutting-edge vitreoretinal environment, to be close to my extended family in the Bay Area, and to enjoy the gift of being a mother and a spouse.
I truly believe that unless one is fulfilled, one cannot truly give of one's self. I hope to pass along to my patients all the blessings I have received.
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