Day 1:

The first day of my Princetern­ship at Ganchi Plas­tic Surgery was spent mostly talk­ing with patients. Many pre-op patients came in to talk to Dr. Ganchi about exactly what kind of a pro­ce­dure they wanted, to dis­cuss their options, and air out their reser­va­tions. Dr. Ganchi would explain to them the dif­fer­ences in pos­si­ble courses of action, check their med­ical his­tory, and fig­ure out how exactly to spe­cial­ize the pro­ce­dure for just what they wanted. These patients were typ­i­cally con­sid­er­ing hav­ing a breast aug­men­ta­tion, a tummy tuck, lipo­suc­tion, a face lift, or some­thing of the sort. Dr. Ganchi would take pic­tures of these patients as well, pri­mar­ily as a com­par­i­son for before and after pic­tures to show future patients. Patients also came in to con­sult about Botox (or the sim­i­lar med­ica­tion Dys­port) to remove wrin­kles from the face, and this could be, and was, done that day on site. All it took was a few small injec­tions to the fore­head, crow’s feet, or glabella depend­ing on which wrin­kles they wanted to tar­get. Some of these patients had done Botox before and Dr. Ganchi knew what dose was best for them, but for new patients he needed to esti­mate what he thought would work best and asked the patients to mon­i­tor when exactly it started work­ing and how long it lasted (typ­i­cally between 3–4 months) so that he could fine-tune their dosage for the future. Patients also came in for post-op check-ups, as Dr. Ganchi mon­i­tored the progress of most of his patients for over a year after surgery, to advise them on activ­ity lev­els, take out stitches, check on how their scars were heal­ing prop­erly, make sure there weren’t any com­pli­ca­tions, and take pic­tures to com­pare with the befores.

Day 2:

The sec­ond day was com­pletely dif­fer­ent from the first, as it was full with surg­eries. The morn­ing was spent prep­ping the oper­at­ing room for, com­plet­ing, and clean­ing up after a breast aug­men­ta­tion. Dur­ing this pro­ce­dure, Dr. Ganchi would make small inci­sions at the base of the breast and free up space under­neath the mus­cle to insert the implant. He would then test for what size works best by insert­ing an empty test implant and fill­ing it with water, see­ing which com­bi­na­tion of sizes in each breast left the two look­ing most even, because of pre­vi­ous asym­me­try.  After remov­ing these test implants, the sil­i­cone implants of the proper size were inserted before clo­sure. The Anes­the­si­ol­o­gist Dr. Lee, who had sedated the patient before surgery and who was mon­i­tor­ing her sta­tus through­out, then woke the patient up and she was moved to the recov­ery room as the OR was prepped for the next patient, who was hav­ing a tummy tuck with abdom­i­nal mus­cle tight­en­ing, a neck lift, and Botox. She also had a small fin­ger­nail infec­tion that she asked Dr. Ganchi to take care of while she was out. The tummy tuck was com­pletely dif­fer­ent from the breast aug­men­ta­tion, as instead of just a small inci­sion and open­ing, the skin of nearly her entire abdom­i­nal area was sep­a­rated from the mus­cle and lifted up in order for the mus­cle to be tight­ened. This required a large inci­sion from hip to hip, and then a cut up from the mid­dle of that first one to the belly but­ton. After the mus­cle had been tight­ened, all the skin from the top of the belly but­ton and below was removed and the skin from above the belly but­ton stretched down and con­nected to the bot­tom with sev­eral lay­ers of stitches. Finally a new hole had to be cut for the belly but­ton, which had been sep­a­rated from its sur­round­ing skin that was removed. The neck lift involved nearly the same process as the abdom­i­nal mus­cle tight­en­ing, but through a very small inci­sion below the chin. This surgery lasted approx­i­mately five hours, after which Dr. Ganchi had one last patient to see, a six year old who had a small piece of asphalt stuck beneath the skin of her knee, which he removed skillfully.

It was really fas­ci­nat­ing to see both sides of plas­tic surgery, the con­sult­ing and the surgery itself, and see­ing patients in all stages of the process. Dr. Ganchi has a great deal of expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in the field, and it is inter­est­ing to hear what he has to say about each of his patients and talk about old cases from when he was newer to the field.. Over­all, it was an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence that showed me a great deal about a field I knew lit­tle about. I learned a lot about surgery and the med­ical pro­fes­sion as a whole, and I am very thank­ful to have had this opportunity.