Jan­u­ary 30, 2012

Today, I shad­owed Dr. Parham Ganchi ’87 at his clinic in Wayne, NJ. I was wel­comed in by a mem­ber of his staff, who then gave me a tour of the clinic. It was an impres­sive dis­play, from all of Dr. Ganchi’s diplo­mas to the spa­cious patient exam­i­na­tion rooms to the pri­vate sur­gi­cal oper­at­ing room. Soon after, Dr. Ganchi him­self arrived and we pre­pared for the long day that was to come. His sched­ule was packed, with patients com­ing in 15 minute inter­vals. There were a vari­ety of pro­ce­dures that patients were con­sid­er­ing hav­ing, from cos­metic surgery to botox to laser/wrinkle hair removals. We also met with patients who were about to have their surgery, what he called a “pre-op”, to make sure that they were cer­tain that they wanted to have the pro­ce­dure. Dur­ing the mini-breaks between patients, we talked about surgery and med­i­cine in gen­eral, Prince­ton life, and our hob­bies and lives out­side of aca­d­e­mics. Dr. Ganchi not only enlight­ened me in the realm of med­i­cine but also on many top­ics that I wasn’t as well versed in, such as nutri­tion and the psy­chol­ogy of economics.

Dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tions, I really saw how engag­ing and com­pas­sion­ate Dr. Ganchi was as a doc­tor, mak­ing sure that all of his patients were fully informed on all the pro­ce­dures and that they were com­fort­able in this envi­ron­ment. Many of the patients that were fol­low­ing up with him after their pro­ce­dures were all extremely sat­is­fied with their surg­eries, which serves to demon­strate the great skill and ded­i­ca­tion Dr. Ganchi brings to his field of med­i­cine. It was really inspir­ing to see it all first­hand, and he will be the per­fect role model for me to look up to as I pur­sue my own path towards medicine.

Jan­u­ary 31, 2012

Stan­ley and Dr.Ganchi

Today was surgery day! I arrived bright and early to prep for surgery, get­ting scrubbed in and being informed on OR shad­ow­ing eti­quette. I also met the anes­the­si­ol­o­gist, Dr. Lee.
Both of the major surg­eries done today were breast aug­men­ta­tion pro­ce­dures, one with sil­i­cone implants and the other saline. He demon­strated the dif­fer­ent tech­niques that went in with dif­fer­ent implants, and showed his ver­sa­til­ity and expe­ri­ence while per­form­ing surg­eries on these patients. Through­out the surgery, Dr. Ganchi explained every step of the pro­ce­dure and was very infor­ma­tive. Some­thing that struck me was that he always had the patient’s best inter­est in mind. Dur­ing the surgery, he was telling me that he had made a small inci­sion under the breast of the patient, as opposed to a longer one, to pre­vent a larger scar from appear­ing. Even though that would make the surgery more com­pli­cated for him, he was more than will­ing to give the extra effort to make his patients sat­is­fied with his work.

After the surg­eries, I wit­nessed an ear­lobe repair surgery. The metic­u­lous­ness and detail of his work showed through this pro­ce­dure, as he slowly weaved back and forth with his stitches through the parts of the ear. I was sur­prised at how lit­tle time it took yet how nat­ural the ear looked after the surgery, a tes­ta­ment to his skill and prowess.

I had come into this Princetern­ship on the fence about med­i­cine and came out more pos­i­tive than ever that med­i­cine is the right track for me. I can­not thank Dr. Ganchi enough for all of the great wis­dom and first­hand expe­ri­ence that I was able to obtain dur­ing these two days. I now have a great men­tor and role model to fol­low and hope­fully I will be able to open my own med­ical clinic some day. This Princetern­ship pro­gram was an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence; the shad­ow­ing was more in depth than any­thing I had ever done and scrub­bing into surgery for the first time was breath­tak­ing. Every­body was really invit­ing and com­pas­sion­ate and really made me feel at home at the clinic. I would rec­om­mend this pro­gram to any­body that is unsure about med­i­cine, because this will def­i­nitely help you make up your mind!