Seeing the Other Side of the Table: A Day in the Operating Room
Many Lives Chinese Medicine has a long history of working with patients navigating fertility, IVF, endometriosis, and women’s health. Over the years, we’ve been fortunate to develop relationships with several fertility clinics and specialists throughout the Bay Area. Recently, one of those relationships gave us an extraordinary opportunity: we were invited to observe Dr. Camran Nezhat during surgery.
If you work in minimally invasive surgery, you probably already know the name. Dr. Nezhat is one of the pioneers of modern operative video-laparoscopy, helping transform laparoscopy from primarily a diagnostic tool into a way of performing increasingly complex surgery through very small incisions. His work has included developing new surgical techniques and instrumentation that have influenced minimally invasive surgery around the world.
And yes—getting to watch a surgeon of that caliber operate was pretty incredible.
A Day in the Operating Room
The patient we observed had an exceptionally complex case of stage IV endometriosis, with extensive pelvic disease, adhesions, cystic disease, and anatomical abnormalities affecting fertility. We were able to watch as multiple problems were addressed during a single minimally invasive procedure.
But what struck me most wasn’t simply what he was doing. It was how he was doing it.
During the surgery, Dr. Nezhat told us the story of Picasso being asked why a drawing that took only ten minutes could be worth so much. Picasso’s response, as Dr. Nezhat told it, was essentially that it took ten minutes—and forty years to get there.
That story stayed with me.
Dr. Nezhat was making a larger point about mastery: when someone has spent decades developing an extraordinary level of skill, the amount of time a procedure takes doesn’t tell you how much work went into becoming capable of doing it.
He gave us a striking example from his own field. When he was developing and pioneering advanced laparoscopic surgery, procedures like the one we watched could take many hours. Today, with decades of experience and advances in minimally invasive surgery, he told us that what once could have taken seven or eight hours can sometimes be accomplished in around thirty minutes.
Watching him work made the difference between doing something and mastering something very visible.
And as an acupuncturist, I found myself thinking about my own medicine.
One of the things I love about Kiiko Matsumoto style acupuncture is that so much of the skill is invisible. A patient may see an acupuncturist touch one small area of the body, find a tender point, and place one needle—and suddenly a completely different area stops hurting.
To the patient, it can look almost effortless.
But that apparent simplicity is built on years of practice: learning to feel subtle changes in the body, recognizing patterns, understanding anatomy and physiology, and developing the sensitivity to know which point matters and which one doesn’t.
The better the practitioner becomes, the simpler the treatment can sometimes look.
That was one of my biggest takeaways from watching Dr. Nezhat. Mastery isn’t necessarily about doing more. Sometimes it’s about knowing exactly what needs to be done—and having spent enough years practicing to do it well.
This experience was also meaningful to us because it allowed us to see fertility care from the other side. Many of our patients come to us after IVF procedures, gynecological surgery, or treatment for endometriosis looking for help with pain, inflammation, recovery, and nervous-system regulation.
Now we’ve had the opportunity to see what happens before those patients arrive in our treatment rooms.
That is what integrative medicine means to me: different practitioners understanding what the others are doing, learning from one another, and ultimately giving patients a more complete continuum of care.
We are incredibly grateful to Dr. Nezhat and his team for allowing us to learn from them.
It was an incredible experience—and a wonderful reminder that no matter how long we practice medicine, there is always more to learn.
It was a very good day to be a student of medicine.
Many Lives Chinese Medicine
Acupuncture Redwood City
650-366-4299
Schedule a Free Consultation
Follow us on Facebook
