Category: Personal Stories

A couple months ago I was invited to speak before the Anderson School of Business at UCLA about entrepreneurship, and I was able to talk about the diversity experienced in the multiple careers I’ve held since receiving my Doctor of Medicine degree from the Medical College of Virginia. So from time to time I’ll share some of these personal tidbits that I spoke to the Anderson School about so you can learn more about me.

I was encouraged by the feedback I received after posting about my short-lived farming career, so I’ll continue to post these as long as there’s an interest. For those of you who do not know much about my background or Dr. Pak’s background in various fields, you can find those here. So without further ado…

The Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump:

In medical school, I was fortunate to find a number of faculty who stimulated the inquisitive mind. I developed an interest while I took a job on the inhalation therapy team and the university hospital. I worked nights and was usually the first person to be called when a patient went into extremis or had a cardiac arrest. I quickly became an expert on cardiac resuscitation. I wondered why some of the patients survived and some did not, so I set up experiments, first in the VA hospital (under Dr. Yale Zimberg) where I started to develop cardiac pumps and then eventually in the research lab of the cardiac surgeon, Dr. Richard Lower. The dean of the school of medicine eventually funded my projects. That got me to eventually work at the University of Minnesota under the famous surgeon Dr. C.W. Lillehei, the father of open-heart surgery. Funds for my ideas eventually came from an endowment fund under Dr. Lillehei’s trust and when I moved from Minnesota to Cornell Medical Center, I eventually came up with the first commercial bedside assist pump, the Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump (see: demo video). The medical cardiology community initially opposed the application of the technology, so the only patients I had a chance to work on were those patients who would not come off of the heart lung machine after cardiac surgery. Dr. Lillehei was clearly my sponsor and not only paid for this work, but encouraged me in developing further improvements. I believe that cardiologists were intimidated by the technology, particularly because some minor surgery was required in the leg to insert the balloon, something that in those days cardiologists were averse to.

I introduced the technology in January, 1969 to about 700 cardiologists. Dr. Lillehei was an invited guest speaker along with 4 other famous doctors — Dr. Denton Cooley, Texas Heart Institute; Dr. Michael DeBakey, Texas Methodist Hospital; Dr. Kaulf, inventor of the artificial kidney; and Dr. Frank Hastings, Director of the National Heart Institute. It is said that serendipity determines events and this was certainly the case when Dr. Lillehei asked me to substitute for him as he had a family event that would take him out of town. He also informed me that I could not use slides since this was a luncheon and there was no audio-visual equipment there. So confronted with being a 27 year old nobody and sitting amongst some of the most famous people in medicine, I had to develop a plan that would not put the audience to sleep. I figured that the technology was cool and I knew that sex sells, so I got a beautiful woman, wired her chest with cardiac leads, put her in a tight nurse’s uniform with some cleavage showing and connected her to the Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump that she then wheeled down between the luncheon tables to the podium. When she was plugged into the electric output, her heart rate was running at 160 beats per minute and scared to death, she held this throbbing balloon in her hand as it followed her heart rate. I got the attention of the entire audience and a wonderful round of applause. I told the audience that the pump would be available for demonstration after the luncheon. I joined the people that were at a booth setup to show the system and there was Michael DeBakey and eventually Denton Cooley who offered me the opportunity to name it after them. DeBakey’s egos was clearly evident.

I took almost 10 years for the technology to be incorporated into the average cardiologist’s skills and they eventually took it into their intensive care units. Now, every cardiac ICU in the world has one or more of these pumps which, I am sure, still saves thousands of lives every year. Although I left that field long ago, I do feel good about that medical contribution. But on a personal level, the best part of what this provided me was that I married the model I used in front of that luncheon group and got 4 wonderful children out of that union.

This is a personal story written by Dr. Jae Pak:

While I am fully trained in hair transplant surgery by Dr. Rassman and it has been my primary practice over the years, I am also trained in emergency medicine. As such, I keep up my skills as an emergency physician at local hospitals in the community a few times a month. This gives me a unique perspective in my professional and personal life. I see the best and worst in people.

Despite what you may think about hair transplant patients, they come from all walks of life. They are not the super wealthy or the Hollywood celebrities. Sure, there are a few of those, but most of my patients are plumbers, teachers, taxi drivers, businessmen, students, etc. Most of my hair transplant patients are healthy, happy, and pleasant. I usually set aside 30 to 60 minutes to bond with them know about their personal life and to establish a true doctor-patient relationship.

In my emergency medicine practice, as you can imagine, I see mostly sick and unhappy patients. And despite what you may think of emergency medicine (as you may see it on TV), its not all about trauma, gun shots, and life or death. Sure, I see my fair share of life or death with gun shots, motor vehicle crashes, and heart attacks, but the good portion of patients I see do not belong in the ER. Due to the overcrowding and long lines in the ER, I do not have the luxury of spending time and bonding with the patients I see, as there are literally lines of patients to be seen. Without going in to a long tirade of how the our health system is broken, I would like to share a story:

I saw a patient in the ER the other day who was about 18 years old. She called the ambulance because she had diarrhea and stomach cramps for a day. When I walked into the room, she was sitting on a chair eating Doritos with a Diet Coke clenched in the other hand. While I doubt that the Diet Coke would help her deuce and half physique, I knew she couldn’t have been in too much distress as she was able to tolerate the spicy flavored corn chips. So when I asked her why she called the ambulance, she looked at me straight in the eye and stated she didn’t have a ride to the hospital and didn’t want to take the bus. We all have had an upset stomach and don’t think to rush to the ER, so when I asked why she felt it necessary to come to the ER, she said she didn’t have any medication at home and didn’t know what to take after the 3rd diarrhea episode, so she though she would get help from the ER. When I asked her if she had a doctor to call, she said she didn’t have a regular doctor and she always comes to the ER to get her all her care because its free.

At this point, I was curious to know why she would think my services in the ER would be free, so I asked her to elaborate. Setting aside her multitasking of texting her boyfriend on her shiny iPhone and sipping on the Diet Coke, she proudly presented a card from her fake Louis Vuitton purse — a disability MediCal ID, like it was her get-out-of-jail-free card. I asked her about her disability, thinking that she must have a horrible childhood disease to get the ID at such a young age. As she continued on with her texting, she told me she is disabled because of her lower back pain issues. She further elaborated that her mom actually helped her get this disability status so she can collect the monthly SSI check from the state, just like her mom. Naturally, back pain is the reason why she does not work or go to school when I asked about her life at home. And aside from the fantastic emergency care I was to provide for her, she demanded I check to see if she was pregnant because she was a day late and didn’t have the money to buy a pregnancy test from the drug store. I was happy to inform my patient after the “free” thousands of dollars worth of work up, that she just had a case of normal stomach flu and that she would be fine. She seemed unfazed after I gave her the results of her pregnancy test and requested a free taxi voucher to go home, because her boyfriend was busy and the mom was nowhere to be found. When the social worker could only help her out with a free bus ticket, she was very upset and asked to go outside for a smoke.

Unfortunately, this typifies a good portion of the patients I see in the ER. It is a familiar truth to most doctors and nurses, and while my story may not be unique, it is a sad stark contrast to the hardworking good intentioned patients I see at New Hair Institute who probably would not call the ambulance for a simple case of diarrhea. We are at the brink of some form of health care reform, but in my humble opinion, we will never have a true health care reform until we have people reform. That’s the extent of my social commentary and I’ll let you interpret the story any which way. Don’t get me wrong, I love working in the ER. For every 100 “typical” patients I see, I sometimes have the privilege to save a life and make a difference. Then the next day I get to come to NHI and make a difference in another way — by giving my patients hair! Those with a full head of hair couldn’t possibly understand, but to some people hair is life or death! To me, I have a great job(s) and I get to meet and help a lot of interesting people from all walks of life.

Paid advertisements (not an endorsement):

This isn’t a hair transplant related post, but it is a trip down memory lane for me. Allow me to indulge myself…

I was recently talking with a friend, and I was asked to think back on a case where I had a patient that I simply did not like. While I do get along well with all of my patients today, I thought for a few moments and remembered an experience I had in my first year in surgical practice (before my life as a hair transplant doctor). The chairman of the hospital board of trustees, a very fat, nasty, and ugly man, was an obstructionist to everything that the doctors, nurses, and local politicians wanted to improve, not only the physical facility, but he was also against changing policies that would make the hospital a more patient-friendly place. He was a political person with strong prejudices and he was despised by most of the doctors as he exercised power over them by vetoing everything they asked for. I remember wondering how I’d react if he came into the emergency room bleeding to death from some type of accident and I was be the surgeon on duty. Then one day, that wonder became reality as he was rolled into the emergency room with internal bleeding from a really bad car wreck.

There was no question how I was going to behave, how I must behave — that I would do my best to save this man’s life. This was no ordinary effort, as he had major bleeding from his liver and a ruptured spleen. By the time I got him to the operating room, his blood pressure was barely detectable. We pumped many units of blood into him, got his blood pressure up a bit, opened his abdomen, removed his spleen, and sewed up his liver. I got him out of the operating room barely alive. If he had died, his injury would have justified it… but not for me. I thought that my subconscious might have tried to work against him. I remember staying at the hospital for 2 days and nights, barely sleeping. I stayed at his bedside and did not go home for over 50 hours. Slowly, he got out of shock, remaining very sick for some days until eventually he recovered. When he came back to his chairman duties months later, he was changed. Anything I would say would become his cause célèbre, so when I endorsed various hospital agenda issues like any improvements in hospital policies, in the hospital’s physical plant, etc… he became an advocate.

This experience was unique for me. I knew if he died, I somehow might be responsible for his death. I did not give him any better care than I would give any of my patients, but my prejudices towards him made me so aware of how vital and important it was for me to be impartial.