Michael Burgdorf, MD - Plastic Surgeon in Nashville, Tennessee

Eva Sheie (00:03):
The purpose of this podcast is simple. We want you to get to know your doctor before meeting them in person because you're making a life-changing decision and time is scarce. The more you can learn about who your doctor is before you meet them, the better that first meeting will be. There is no substitute for an in-person appointment, but we hope this comes close. I'm your host, Eva Sheie, and you're listening to Meet the Doctor. Today on Meet the Doctor, my guest is Michael Burgdorf. He's a board certified plastic surgeon in Nashville, Tennessee. Welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Burgdorf (00:39):
Hey, how you doing? It's good to see you. Good to be here.

Eva Sheie (00:42):
Tell me about your practice. Nashville's such a great place to be, but you haven't been there forever, have you?

Dr. Burgdorf (00:49):
No. We got here in 2009 and my journey kind of started back. I went to Notre Dame for college, played football at Notre Dame and really kind of got myself grounded and I played for Lou Holtz who was awesome and just the whole experience there and he was really big into integrity and being true to yourself and being a good person as well as being a good football player, which was great. So fast forward there, I go into Tulane for medical school in New Orleans and stayed there for general surgery in my training. I got really unbelievable experience just seeing everything that I could imagine. I guess I brought the football because while we played football my junior year, we played at Vanderbilt in Nashville and I remember flying in and thinking, man, this area is beautiful. I grew up in New Jersey and the geography reminded me somewhat of rural New Jersey, Northwest, New Jersey, not the stinky smoggy,

Eva Sheie (01:45):
Not Rahway?

Dr. Burgdorf (01:46):
No, and not the Newark Airport, New Jersey aspect of things. Nashville was just beautiful. And so then we went through Katrina, hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. We were kind of blown out there, had to determine where the heck to go to Mississippi, where my in-laws lived. So I lived with them for a little bit. They accepted me into the residency on a day notice. I could finish out general surgery and then I ended up doing plastics there and it was awesome and great experience there. And then we decided to come up to Nashville and joined a practice for a couple of years, decided, Hey, I think I could do this better, do this different. And that's the fun part of plastic surgery is a lot of people we're all different and I just wanted that control and that ability to make changes on the fly. So I opened up my practice in 2012 and it's been phenomenal.

(02:34):
We deal with a lot of mommies and mommy makeovers and gravitate towards people that were going through the same things that I'm going through. I have four kids and a wife that works and they're making their way through teenage years now and still got one 9-year-old daughter. But started really working with moms and loved the ripple effect of plastic surgery and got enough experience where I felt like I could help people. And this is why I love that your podcast is awesome because talking to somebody, one-on-one in front of them in the office is great, but it's limited and you can't get that message out further and deeper. So I wrote the Mommy Makeover book, Restoring Your Body After Childbirth, as a way to kind of get that information out there and let somebody who's got three and a half minutes while the baby is sleeping to pick up a chapter and zip through it and say, Hey, maybe this is something I want to do for myself. Instead of doing all the things that require to get out of the house and see a doctor for an hour, hour and a half appointment, that might take two and a half hours of their time getting the baby together and bringing everything and the kitchen sink in their car to make sure that everything's managed with the kid. So we had really good success with that. It was the number one Amazon bestseller and practice just kind of blew up after that and it's been a lot of fun since then.

Eva Sheie (03:52):
How long did it take you to write the book?

Dr. Burgdorf (03:55):
Once I started getting pen to paper, it took about seven months.

Eva Sheie (03:59):
Did you actually write it with a pen?

Dr. Burgdorf (04:02):
Yeah. Yeah. Alright, I did a little dictating stuff and I'm such a physical guy that the writing aspect is kind of how I think through it. I can talk and dictate, but it didn't work and I actually, I tried that addition. I tried to just record myself in a consultation. I wanted it to be very plain, very easy, and I try to do that when I speak. I try to avoid the doctor talk so people don't get confused. Kind of seeing my wife go through it with four kids and then my sister's going through it with their kids. That baby brain thing is real and I don't need to complicate it.

Eva Sheie (04:33):
Yes, it is.

Dr. Burgdorf (04:34):
By having all these big high falutin words. So I spoke very plainly. I got the recording back to listen to it again and I'm like, Hmm, it sounds like a fifth grader wrote this. I got to put words in here that are actually some medical and bump it up a little bit. So it took a little while, but it's been great.

Eva Sheie (04:51):
It's my number one trick for getting rid of writer's block is to pretend I'm writing an email to a person that I know.

Dr. Burgdorf (04:57):
Love it.

Eva Sheie (04:57):
It works every time.

Dr. Burgdorf (04:59):
Oh, that's really smart. One thing I did was really try to pay attention to, okay, I'm speaking to one individual and this is my mom, my ideal patient, and what is her perspective? What is she going to question and ask? And so how can I really reach her and really focus on her? So I like that one email thing. That's smart.

Eva Sheie (05:18):
Let's go back to football for a second. I have a really important question. Do you follow the current team?

Dr. Burgdorf (05:24):
Not as much as I used to, but yeah, I do.

Eva Sheie (05:26):
Okay. My husband is an eighth grade teacher and his coworker is also, who's also an eighth grade teacher. Her son is on the team right now.

Dr. Burgdorf (05:35):
Oh, awesome.

Eva Sheie (05:36):
His name is Jaden Greathouse and he's incredible.

Dr. Burgdorf (05:39):
How cool.

Eva Sheie (05:40):
So now you have to watch him.

Dr. Burgdorf (05:42):
Yeah, I will. I mean, it's such an experience. I'm a little bitter right now. My oldest son, he's a freshman at University of Tennessee, and he didn't get in at Notre Dame, so I'm like, well, it kind of stings a little bit, but he's doing great at Tennessee.

Eva Sheie (05:56):
This is a new mom thing too. As my kids are getting older, they're six and three, I did not anticipate how much anguish I would feel over them being rejected even when they don't know that they were rejected from something. I know. And it hurts.

Dr. Burgdorf (06:13):
It's awful. It's awful.

Eva Sheie (06:15):
Even though it's not our plan, it isn't our plan for them.

Dr. Burgdorf (06:21):
That's right. I feel the same way. I had to kind of come to that realization too and realize it was more of a, I'll call it bragging rights, but I'm proud. I went to Notre Dame. I loved it. I had a great experience there. It's a wonderful school. I wanted him to be proud of going to Notre Dame too. And we used to joke about, oh, he's always going to go to Notre Dame or he is not going to go to college. And you know what? It shifted and the focus shifted and he's proud to be at Tennessee and I'm proud to have him at Tennessee. He's really found his place. That's been fun to see and I think God puts you where you need to be put. And I didn't want to go to Notre Dame to begin with, and I went out there and fell in love with the place and it was been one of the best decisions on my life.

Eva Sheie (07:00):
It's crazy how often we think we fell into something backwards when it was really the plan all along.

Dr. Burgdorf (07:05):
A hundred percent. Yep, that's exactly right.

Eva Sheie (07:09):
Is he your oldest?

Dr. Burgdorf (07:10):
He is, yep. He's having a blast. I don't know that any of my kids are going to be interested in medicine. He's business and entrepreneurship, which has been fun because plastic surgery has that entrepreneurship aspect. My wife is a hospitalist, deals with patients in the hospital. She wants nothing to do with business. She wants no creative marketing or advertising or any of that stuff. It would drive her nuts and I love it. I thrive on it.

Eva Sheie (07:38):
That hospitalist as a specialty is rather new. What was she originally?

Dr. Burgdorf (07:44):
Internal medicine, internal medicine, trained and board certified. And then she did a couple things, ER shifts for a bit, trying to take some time off with the kids and this hopefully was going to be nice shift work and really can kind of take care of really complex medical problems. And we joke that she's the thinking doctor and I'm the technical doctor in the office or in the house. You go talk to her if you're really sick.

Eva Sheie (08:10):
If you're really sick. Yeah. Yeah. I had a plastic surgeon tell me once that whenever he was on an airplane and they did, is there a doctor on the plane thing? He'd be like,

Dr. Burgdorf (08:20):
Yeah, oh no.

Eva Sheie (08:21):
Please don't make it be me.

Dr. Burgdorf (08:24):
Yeah, I mean probably in a pinch. Yeah, but not desirable at this point.

Eva Sheie (08:28):
No, not great. When did you know that you wanted to be a doctor?

Dr. Burgdorf (08:33):
Seventh grade.

Eva Sheie (08:35):
Was there a moment?

Dr. Burgdorf (08:37):
No, I just remember talking to people a lot and felt like they would come to me with their problems and I would try to help solve that. And maybe even before that, my mom was a nurse in the operating room prior to my sister being born. She's a year older than me, and when we came along, she hung that up, but she would always tell me stories about the operating room and just the culture of its own little world. And I just found that so fascinating and just some of the banter and the jokes that went on while they're doing serious work, I love that aspect. And so I really kind of gravitated towards that. And then in seventh grade, I really started thinking, Hey, this to me is the most challenging thing that I think I can do with my life. It's the hardest thing out there and it just fit me. And so people would come to me with their problems and I would kind of hear them through and say, let me about going to psychiatry. And then that shifted through with residency and med school.

Eva Sheie (09:31):
Plastic surgery has a lot of psychiatry in it.

Dr. Burgdorf (09:34):
It does, it does. But honestly, that was on my rotations in medical school. That was the most exhausting rotation I ever did because it wasn't the time and the physical, it was the emotional, you tell people, Hey, this or you give 'em a medication. And I just felt like I couldn't help him and it was paralyzing and I hated it. Hated it. So it does play into a little bit with the psychiatry of or the psychology in plastic surgery because hey, here's the issue and here's probably now I can understand why you're thinking this and we change this aspect of your body, what's also going to happen with your thinking and with your confidence, and that's really been fun to marry those two together.

Eva Sheie (10:15):
You were mentioning the fun part of being on a team in the OR that was interesting to you, but you also were on a football team. Are there similarities that you can express between those two things? What did you learn about being on a football team that carried over into being on an OR team?

Dr. Burgdorf (10:34):
Yeah. There's a lot of stuff with that. Everybody's got to have their own position and your position changes.

Eva Sheie (10:39):
Yeah. Know your job.

Dr. Burgdorf (10:39):
And as your experience grows. And so even back into high school, I was captain of the football team, I was a good player, but interestingly enough, I was not recruited for football at a division one college. In fact, my first choice was Dartmouth and they told me later I didn't get in because my football wasn't strong enough. And so I said, okay, I'll go play at Notre Dame. I did not not go with those things, but I went not with the intent to play. And so I walked on my sophomore year, which I'll give you a side story on that. I decided that October of my freshman year after not making the team for lacrosse that I should maybe go out and play football and talk to the coach. And he was all in. And then Rudy comes out Christmas break and I'm like, oh no,

(11:27):
I had already made the arrangements. He said, come out first day of classes after the summer camp Rudy comes out. I'm like, ah, are there going to be 300 idiots out here? Rudy was trying to get on the team and what am I going to do? And I always got to try it. And there were about 305 and they took five of us and got rid of the other 300 guys who didn't belong out there who were just inspired by the movie. And that had an awesome experience. Really, really was. It was a lot of fun. But I was total low man on the totem pole at Notre Dame. I was a walk-on, was second class citizen type thing instead of the scholarship guys. And I was not as good. There was no doubt about it. These guys were bigger, faster, stronger to a point.

(12:07):
And I hung in there very well. But I had to learn from being at the pinnacle. A captain of a football team in high school kind of got knocked down a notch with, well, Dartmouth didn't take you to get back up to get on the team, but then still low man on the totem pole. So a lot of adjustments in humility, I think. And you've obviously got the captain of the team or you've got the quarterback of the team that's kind of the surgeon, got to run the room and there's things that you have to do. I can't run around in the football field by myself and try to make every tackle. There's 10 other guys that need to be there that help push people towards me so I can make the tackle. Same thing with obviously the surgery. We depend on the nurses a lot and first assist a lot. And the anesthesiologist, I mean there's all that that's at play. Everybody's got their nice role and have a perspective of where are they in their role. And going through medical school residency, you kind of hit all those roles. You kind of start out where you're sitting there watching and you're holding another tractor and then maybe you can get your hands on the patient and move forward to what you're actually doing with the surgery. So understanding those roles I think are important.

Eva Sheie (13:15):
I'm going to make a weird analogy and I want to see if, because I've been exploring this idea in my own mind, it used to think that a surgeon in an OR that it would be kind of driving a car. You'd get in the car and you know how when you drive somewhere and you get there and then you realize that you don't remember how you got there. You were on autopilot?

Dr. Burgdorf (13:36):
Right.

Eva Sheie (13:38):
I raised that once and I don't remember who I was talking to, but they were like, no, no, no, it's not like that at all. But I didn't ever figure out why. So I kept thinking about it. And I think what's happening is you're doing surgery, but the thing occupying the second plane in your mind is the other people in the room because you're also directing them and making sure they're doing their jobs. You are the quarterback, right? Yeah, very much so. There is no space to go anywhere else in your head. You're doing two things at once.

Dr. Burgdorf (14:08):
We do about three things or four things because we've got to your point, I'm doing the surgery and I'm helping guide the assistant, and that's where it gets really efficient and fund when the first assistant and the scrub tech and when they know what's going on. And I try to preempt that a little bit. Like, okay, hey, next I'm going to need a Two-O Vicryl, and then we're going to use the insorb and then we're going to use a four ohl. Okay, so get ready and then we can get efficient and move through things. And I don't have to worry as much about them, but we're playing music and we're talking about what's going on. So to me, it's a fun atmosphere and I'm having a conversation, but I'm working as I'm having a, and I actually do better that way than just stand there or just work or just talk.

(14:57):
And it used to drive me bananas in residency. There was a couple of guys that would, you couldn't tell 'em hello because they would be like, oh, hi, put their hands down and start talking to you. I'm like, Hey, we got a patient here. We got to get moving. We will talk later. And you got to shut that off. But to me, it's fun to have the conversation with the hands moving and seeing a lot of this stuff. So I think it's just more awareness overall of a lot of different planes that I feel like. And then we can put some things on autopilot. Like, we can put on, I try to figure out what the gauge of the room is, right? And if it's right after lunch, people might get a little sluggish. So we might have to get a little more upbeat music, love listening to some pit bull in the afternoon. It's great, great liposuction and tummy tuck music, but starting off today that way might be a little too much. So we kind of tone it down. So it's kind of fun to play the mood of the music as well.

Eva Sheie (15:55):
So as a young adult, you experience some setbacks that you've mentioned a couple times you're hoping to get into Dartmouth and you don't get on the football team just without planning to really at all. But this adversity, I think, when we're younger, sets us up to do more as we get older. Have you thought about that much?

Dr. Burgdorf (16:20):
Oh yeah. I thought about it as I was going through it too, because it was, okay, can I make the team, should I even bother trying out? And it was like I never wanted to live with regrets. So it was am I big enough, fast enough, strong enough, only one way to find out, get yourself prepared and go. And then I was on the team for about a month and the whole big thing, and Rudy is when can he dress out and make the team that goes on the field? And so I did. It took me a little while, but I finally made the dress team and it was really cool because one of my parents were out there for the first time doing that. And then the next week I would've to, I'm in practice and I blow my knee out and I'm out for the season.

(17:02):
I'm out for the year. And the doc who operated on me told my mom later, Hey, he should never play football again. He's got too much cartilage damage underneath and this, that and the other. And he wouldn't tell me. She said, you tell him. She said, he said, no, he wouldn't had another doctor tell me. And I said, okay, well, I appreciate that I'm going into medicine and if I need a knee replacement when I'm 40 years old, there's going to be technology that's going to advance. I've already gotten a taste of what I can do and what football is all about here, and I'll be back. I'll make it back for next year and I'll make it back before summer football and I'm going to go from there. And I did. And he was like, no, I don't think so. Maybe by midyear. And I was like, nope.

(17:44):
And so it was more of a thing like a challenge to myself, Hey, how much can you push yourself? And I think if you don't push yourself or continually push yourself, not just physically like the football was, but mentally, spiritually, emotionally, then what are we doing here? Why are you even participating in life? And so I've always had that attitude of trying to push forward, push forward. That's one of our big core values in my practice, is never be complacent. And it's not from a being mad and looking down upon people. It is looking inward and saying, how can we improve? How can we improve this experience? How can I get better with my technique? How can I improve my knowledge? How can I relate with my patients better and get a better relationship? And then I just carry that even to my home life with my wife and my kids and my coworkers and my friends. All that stuff goes throughout the way there. So I'm a big believer in keep pushing yourself.

Eva Sheie (18:43):
Did that guy who said you should never play again, did it make you angry? Did it make you more determined?

Dr. Burgdorf (18:51):
Yeah, it didn't make me angry. It was just like, oh, okay, well, you know what? I don't know whether I had the guts or the, maybe arrogance, I don't know, to say, you know what? I appreciate your input. I know you're a doctor, but you're not infallible. And I think I know my body. I know what I can do. And I got this. And it wasn't, oh, I'm going to prove you wrong. It was, Nope, this is my goal. I want to get back on the team. And I missed the two a days this first year. I wasn't allowed on the team until then, and I want to be part of that and I want to travel with the team. So I ended up missing the first away game. I didn't make the travel squad. And then I made every other game after that for the next two years. It was awesome. It was a great experience.

Eva Sheie (19:35):
No regrets.

Dr. Burgdorf (19:36):
No, no. And that's why I said I didn't want to do that. I have a little regrets now about banging heads as hard as I did. You got a little neck pain, so maybe that wouldn't serve me as well.

Eva Sheie (19:46):
We didn't know as much about head trauma as we do now.

Dr. Burgdorf (19:49):
No head trauma. I didn't care about that. I was worried about my knee trauma. I got that one. No problem there. Yeah. Yeah. And we didn't know.

Eva Sheie (19:57):
So you also played lacrosse because you grew up in New Jersey, so of course you played lacrosse.

Dr. Burgdorf (20:01):
Yeah.

Eva Sheie (20:01):
Yeah. Were you a defender?

Dr. Burgdorf (20:04):
I was, yep. I played my freshman year, started playing and they said, you like to hit people with your football here, grab a stick and go beat somebody with this stick. Just don't try to chop your head off, their head off. I can do that. That's great. So it was good. I was very good in defending. I was not so good in carrying the ball and shooting, and so the stick skills weren't there, but the brute skills were pretty good.

Eva Sheie (20:29):
There's a place for that too. There's actually a place for everything on a lacrosse team.

Dr. Burgdorf (20:33):
Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah. We had thunder and lightning. I think were coming. Some of the defenders, I was more the thunder and my buddies were more lightning quick.

Eva Sheie (20:41):
Oh I love that.

Dr. Burgdorf (20:42):
He actually ended up playing at Notre Dame and it was all American out there, so it was fun to see him go with his pathway.

Eva Sheie (20:49):
Oh, that is cool.

Dr. Burgdorf (20:50):
And he's an orthopedic surgeon.

Eva Sheie (20:52):
Of course. Okay, so I want to jump fast forward a little bit. You went through Katrina, you lived in New Orleans during that time?

Dr. Burgdorf (21:03):
I did, yeah.

Eva Sheie (21:03):
Is that a story you can tell?

Dr. Burgdorf (21:05):
Sort of. Actually, I ended up leaving right before it hit. My wife stayed in New Orleans. There were three hospitals, right? Associated with the university Charity Hospital was the big one, the mothership, so to speak, where it was the indigent hospital. It was all the major trauma center. And then there was a smaller hospital, Tulane, and then University Hospital. And I was down at the university hospital and I had five patients I think maybe. And I was going to go and really hang out at charity, was my plan. And then, yeah, my neighbors were chefs, he was a chef and he had lived there years and been through all different types of things. He's like, we're not going anywhere. I said, cool, can you watch my dog? I got to go in and hang out. And my wife was on staff at Tulane, so she had a little office in the med school and I was just going to stay in her office overnight.

(21:57):
And we kind of checked in and then I was like, oh shoot, I forgot to put the lawn furniture in. They're going to blow things through my windows. Lemme go do that. And as I go back, my neighbors are packing up and I'm like, what's going on? And they're like, we're out of here. We're leaving. And I was like, well, maybe this is worse than I expected. And I said, all right, let me just do this. And so that I can't take care of my dog. My wife was out of town with my son. She was up actually in Mississippi. And I'm like, you're not getting back. Don't even try. But maybe I can drive the dog up to my in-law's house three hours away and then come back around. And so I talked to the other chief resident. I said, Hey, can you cover me for tonight?

(22:34):
I'm just going to go do this and I'll be back in and I, I'll be here for to run their thing out. Yeah, no problem. So I zip out thinking I'm zipping out, and three hour trip took 12. And then by then the storm had hit and there was no way I was getting back. And it was awful. And it was early text messaging times where we would sit and watch on CNN. Well, this road is shut down. This area is no good. We had a house right by the Children's hospital, which a friend of mine was stationed there, and he would kind of give us updates every day or every other day, floodwaters are coming down your road. I'm like, are we going to lose the house? Flood waters are better. But now looters are out in front of the hospital. And I'm like, oh, great.

(23:17):
They're going to try to keep breaking there. They can't break in there to get the medication, so they're just going to break into the homes that are around there. And it was all this uncertainty. And then all my buddies are still back there, so I hated that. I have little survivor's remorse or guilt that I should have been there, but I don't know. I mean, God's got a way of doing things and putting that dog that needed to get me out, I would've stayed. And I would've been one of my close chief residents was really involved in and almost got himself killed just in all the trauma and dehydration and giving and giving. And so I don't know, I wish I were part of that. But

Eva Sheie (23:56):
You must have had really nice lawn furniture.

Dr. Burgdorf (23:59):
I guess, so I don't, why was that so important? Right? I mean, it's some stupid thing that just said, Hey, run back home really quick. And then I actually, I grabbed the dog, and that's my plan is I was going to go bring the dog in to the medical school in my wife's office and let him hang there. And at that point, they had shut every entrance down. You had to have your badge to check in, and I can't sneak a hundred pound lab in at this point. And then I had to make that decision. So yeah, it's still tough. But we go back to New Orleans. We love New Orleans. It's a city that just gets in your soul.

Eva Sheie (24:31):
Yeah, it's so great. I was in Houston during that and within about two weeks, the whole city, I remember my apartment complex was 80% occupied and within two weeks it was a hundred percent. And people were just like 10, 12 people in one bedroom apartments. It was back when I was young and broke. So

Dr. Burgdorf (24:53):
Yeah, it was pretty awful. We ended up at my in-laws and then they lost power. And so we ended up at my brother-in-Law, and my wife was pregnant at that point. And it was miserable in our little world, not as misery as losing a house and losing a person. But you can see some of the stories

Eva Sheie (25:11):
In this sort of indirect way, is this how you ended up being a plastic surgeon? Were you already going to be a plastic surgeon?

Dr. Burgdorf (25:18):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I went through with medical school, did a rotation on plastics. I thought I was going to go orthopedics because of all the sports and all the rest of that stuff. Background loved that. And again, God's got away to just kind of, Hey, push you over here a little bit. And did a rotation on plastics. Really, really found the creative aspect of it. Love the ripple effect, like I said, of how it affects people. And I would be miserable as an orthopedic surgeon. I mean to me, they're just glorified carpenters boring.

Eva Sheie (25:47):
I've heard this before.

Dr. Burgdorf (25:49):
Yeah, I mean it's just hammer nails and screw the plate in next. It was kind of like general surgery. I hated general surgery too. It was once you got inside somebody, it's all the same, all kind of boring. So I like the exterior part and I like the reasons why people do it to me, the fun part, they hear the story and hey, how can we help you improve your story? We talk about improving yourself and getting better. I think there's one way of that too with some surgery. If we can help with that, that's great. That works within my mission statement and my modus operandi of who I am.

Eva Sheie (26:22):
So are you now known around Nashville for being the mommy makeover guy?

Dr. Burgdorf (26:26):
Yeah, somewhat. It is funny. It depends on who you talk to and which circle you're in, right? People say, oh, do you know so-and-so oh, he's like the breast guy over here, this guy over here. He's the tummy tuck guy. And you're like, yeah.

Eva Sheie (26:38):
Says the web company.

Dr. Burgdorf (26:40):
Or says you and your four circle of friends, but you go to this neighborhood and I'm the mommy makeover guy and you go in this neighborhood and she's the mommy makeover woman. So it's nice to put that claim on it, but I think I'm realistic enough. There's enough business to go around here. There's enough activity and desire and there's enough good surgeons. I mean that's the good news about Nashville is there are a lot.

Eva Sheie (27:04):
That was my next comment was you're blessed there to have so many good surgeons in Nashville.

Dr. Burgdorf (27:11):
And the community is great. We all get along. I mean, I'm not going to give every secret to them and I don't expect every secret for them to give to me, but we share each other's patients. We have monthly meetings that we talk about different things, new advances, talking about the semaglutide recently and things like that. So you're not left alone as a community doctor. There is that good community that's out there.

Eva Sheie (27:34):
Well, you brought up my favorite topic, which is semaglutide. What are you seeing so far?

Dr. Burgdorf (27:41):
We're seeing great results. We're seeing people charging an arm and a leg and people charging reasonable prices. We're seeing pretty nice results with it. And we kind of keep a select window, I guess. I don't want to treat diabetes and I don't want to treat the BMI of 22 who just wants to get another three pounds off. We want to treat it with people who are struggling and we try to help guide them to change their lifestyle and get up on a better diet exercise regimen with them.

Eva Sheie (28:12):
Do you have them come in once a month?

Dr. Burgdorf (28:14):
Yeah, they come once a month. We give 'em their month worth of injectables or injections that they take with, we usually give it to 'em right when they're there and see 'em once a month, weigh 'em, kind of experience what's going on. And it's fun because you're tweaking it. It's not like, okay, the next dose is this, you got to stick on this. Hey, if this isn't working, let's back up. Or let's spread it out again, more individualized care, which I love that. Instead of just follow a protocol in free and be mindless.

Eva Sheie (28:41):
I had this kind of nice light bulb moment this week that the compounding enables you to really be customizable with the patients and not just fit them into the box that the prescription forces you to be in.

Dr. Burgdorf (28:54):
Yeah. Agreed. Agreed. I like that aspect of things.

Eva Sheie (28:56):
And then the relationship too. You get to cheer everybody on as they're going through it and they become your friends. Plastic surgery, you go through it, you're not coming in every month for as long as you're doing it. So that's new for most practices. And I think it's really positive.

Dr. Burgdorf (29:16):
And we are pretty good about following up with our patients. We really try to keep a strong relationship. So it's not too foreign for us. I mean it is. They're not every month, but every three, four months, they're coming in and we want to keep patients for life. And like you said, you become friends with them. You like them, you want to see them and celebrate their victories. Oh, look at you. You lost another 10 pounds. That's awesome. Keep it up. That's exciting for me too because we're seeing results.

Eva Sheie (29:44):
If someone's listening today and they want to come see you or find out more about you, where should they look?

Dr. Burgdorf (29:49):
Yeah, go to the website, music city plastic surgery.com. We're on Instagram. We play around on there a little bit. We try to show a little more of a fun side of us, and we've got some fun videos and the Fat Fighting Championship and a couple of different things there that we have a good time with.

Eva Sheie (30:03):
That sounds interesting.

Dr. Burgdorf (30:06):
And call us anytime. I think it's 6 1 5 2 0 5 5 1 5 5. But music city plastic surgery.com is the easiest way to get us. And then on Instagram.

Eva Sheie (30:15):
I'll make sure we put all those links in the show notes. Make it easy to find you.

Dr. Burgdorf (30:19):
That'd be easy. I appreciate it.

Eva Sheie (30:19):
And I'm so honored that I got to get to know you today.

Dr. Burgdorf (30:22):
Thanks, Eva. I appreciate you letting me ramble on for a little bit. It's fun to talk to you and share my story a little bit.

Eva Sheie (30:30):
If you are considering making an appointment or are on your way to meet this doctor, be sure to let them know you heard them on the Meet the Doctor podcast. Check the show notes for links including the doctor's website and Instagram to learn more. Are you a doctor or do you know a doctor who'd like to be on the Meet the Doctor podcast? Book your free recording session at Meet the doctor podcast.com. Meet the Doctor is Made with Love in Austin, Texas and is a production of The Axis T-H-E-A-X-I-S. io.