This blog describes my first real experiences with microsurgery and how this impacted on my lifelong passion and career as a microsurgical vasectomy reversal surgeon.
Looking back, my first exposure to microsurgery and the spark that guided me to vasectomy reversals actually began at the Mayo Clinic 40 years ago in 1983.
I was in my general surgery training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and was doing a rotation in gynecologic cancer surgery. There were a few days each week when I wasn’t assisting in major cancer surgery and so opted to do an additional rotation in microsurgical tubal reversals with Dr. Tiffany Johns Williams (a burly big man with full face of red hair, an old English name, and yes, related to the Johns of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, he explained).
As I was always drawn to microsurgery, painting landscapes on the head of a pin or writing the Gettysburg address on the back of a postage stamp, it seemed to be a natural rotation to try. It was during those many hours of assisting Dr. Williams performing microsurgical tubal reversals and listening to him talk that I realized that there was something more to medicine and surgery than simply cutting out and fixing cancer, broken parts and disease. I began to understand that surgeons could use their skills and passion to restore people to be able to conceive children again, the ultimate gift. It also amazed me that people would seek out and travel to Dr. Williams and other doctors at the Mayo Clinic from all over the US and the world for their care. I worked hard to learn what made the Mayo philosophy and approach to care so different from so many other leading medical centers.
The time spent doing microsurgical tubal reversals was one of the most valuable inspirations to guide me into my life as a full-time vasectomy reversal surgeon. With this, I also carried forward and incorporated into my own practice the amazing qualities of the Mayo Clinic, their gifted surgeons as well as what I learned at Tufts/New England Medical Center in Boston – how patients should be treated always as the priority with passion and honesty, at all times.
I learned at Mayo that it is all about the patient and nothing else. At so many other famous institutions, teaching medical students or residents or doing important research and advancing science and care, of course a noble cause, is the primary purpose. But at the Mayo Clinic, and here at our full-time, vas reversal only vasectomy reversal practice for the past 35+ years, it’s always all about giving each and every patient the absolute highest level of care and an exceptional experience. This is what I learned in my years in Rochester, Minnesota and in Boston, over the past many decades and what I continue to do each and every day here at the International Center for Vasectomy Reversal.
What’s especially exciting is that over the years with patients from every state in the US and more than 85 countries around the world, I also continue to receive referrals from other Mayo doctors and administrators. Even as recently as last week, Mayo Clinic employees and top Mayo administrators themselves do their research and choose to come to ICVR for their vasectomy reversal.
Thank you Mayo Clinic, all the amazing doctors and nurses who taught me so much and especially Dr. Tiffany Johns Williams.
To find out more about vasectomy reversals at ICVR, call us today!
This page was reviewed, edited and updated June 13, 2023 by Dr. Sheldon H. F. Marks.
