Eight long years later, including a move up to Chicago, I graduated with a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an MD from the University of Illinois at Chicago. In Chicago, I served as President of the Alpha Chapter of Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA), and at graduation I received the William J Grove Outstanding Medical Student Award, given to one student each year for outstanding scholarship and community involvement. I am proud to say that while president of AOA, our organization erected an outdoor sculpture: "Amelioration" by Terrence Karpowicz, that still stands as the centerpiece of the College of Medicine East Courtyard .
I then attended a one year Internal Medicine Residency at Northwestern University School of Medicine, in Chicago, followed by a three year Ophthalmology Residency, also at Northwestern. At Northwestern I was the first resident to perform refractive surgery (astigmatic keratotomy).
On July 15th, 1994 I officially began private practice in a busy surgical practice in Buffalo New York where I specialized in cataract surgery, refractive surgery, and corneal transplants, and in September of 1996, I continued to refine my No Stitch, No Patch, No Injection cataract surgical techniques in Minneapolis and the Brainerd Lakes area of Minnesota, and since our office had one of the first excimer lasers, it was here that I began to perform laser refractive surgery.
Tired of the hostile weather, and not terribly interested in ice fishing, in August of 1997 I returned to sunny San Diego, where bad weather means good surf!
My hobbies include surfing, scuba, photography and
any other excuse to go to the beach. 