Becoming Virtuosa with Dr. Susan Crockett | Welcoming in the New with Dr. Sonia Koshy

Episode #100:

Welcoming in the New with Dr. Sonia Koshy

To celebrate 100 episodes of the podcast, we are joined by a very special guest, our new MIGS surgeon at our practice, Dr. Sonia Koshy. Sonia is here to help me with my mission professionally, but she’s also here to help us go where the scalpel can’t reach.

Minimally-invasive GYN surgery is relatively new and there aren’t many surgeons like us around. But by working close together, we can change the lives of women on an even greater scale, and we sit down to talk about that and more on today’s show.

Tune in this week as Dr. Koshy and I welcome in the new era we’re starting here at Virtuosa GYN. We discuss all the exciting things we’re working on, what we love about the work we do, the impact we want to make, and we dive deep into the work we’re currently doing to help all of you live healthier lives.

WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER

Our plans for sharing the work we do as MIGS surgeons.

What we try to achieve through our work as doctors and the impact we want to make in the world.

How Dr. Koshy’s developed her passion for women’s health.

The struggle that endometriosis patients encounter with doctors who don’t truly understand their needs.

What we have planned for the future of Virtuosa GYN.

FEATURED ON THE SHOW

Come find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show and subscribe today.

TRANSCRIPT

You remember the clinicians, the physicians that really took care of you and took care of your family as though you weren't just a number. That, I think, is my initial reason for even entering into medicine.

Welcome to Becoming Virtuosa, the podcast that encourages you to become your best virtuosa self. Each week Dr. Susan Crockett goes where the scalpel can't reach, exploring conversations about how to be, heal, love, give, grow, pray, and attune. For the first time ever, she's bringing the personal one on one teaching that she shares with individual patients to you on this broader platform. A weekly source of inspiration and encouragement designed to empower you.

By evolving ourselves as individuals. We influence and transform the world around us. Please help me welcome board certified OB-GYN specializing in minimally invasive GYN surgery, internationally in the top 1% of all GYN robotic surgeons, a certified life coach, and US News top doctor, your host Susan A. Crockett, MD.

Dr. Crockett: Welcome back to The Dr. Crockett Show. I'm your host, Dr. Susan Crockett. I'm coming to you every Tuesday from San Antonio, Texas where I'm a board certified OBGYN. I practice a special kind of OBGYN called minimally invasive GYN surgery, or MIG surgery. What that means is I do robotic surgery, and it's a lot of fun because I help a lot of women.

I'm super excited today. We are calling the show today Welcoming in the New. It is the 100th episode, y'all. The 100th episode of Becoming Virtuosa, our podcast. So those of you that are from the show know that we started The Dr. Crockett Show on YouTube in mid-2023. This is like episode 60 something of that.

But prior to that, in 2020, I had started with a podcast that's available on Apple and Spotify and all the places that you listen called Becoming Virtuosa.

I started that as a place where we would start talking about wellness and how we work towards becoming the best versions of ourselves. Because we believe that's how we make the world around us better is we start encouraging each other and becoming the best versions of ourselves. So to welcome in the new, which is our 100th episode, I have an incredibly special guest today. This is Dr. Sonia Koshy.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Hello. It's good to be here.

Dr. Crockett: Sonia is my new MIGS surgeon. She is joining our practice this month. I have wanted somebody to help me with my mission. We always talk on the show about going where the scalpel doesn't reach because most of what we talk about is wellness. But I'm bringing somebody on with you today, y'all, who is helping me with the scalpel for those of you that need help.

She is fantastic. I want you to kind of get to know her a little bit today. We're going to talk about her background, and just introduce her to you. Sonia, I'm so glad for you to finally be here. It seems like it's been forever waiting to welcome you in and welcome.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: I know. Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. I'm really excited to get started.

Dr. Crockett: Right?

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Yes. It's been enough time.

Dr. Crockett: Because this MIGS thing is such a new field.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: It is.

Dr. Crockett: There's not that many of us.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Right.

Dr. Crockett: For us to be in a place where we can really concentrate on doing the best surgery for women and having the best outcomes and making it as easy as possible for them. I don't know of any other place where we have this in a private practice in the United States.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: That's absolutely true.

Dr. Crockett: It's really cool.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: This is where medicine is heading and should be heading. Really, it's getting the most trained people to do the harder surgeries, but also do the everyday all your needs as well.

Dr. Crockett: Yep. So Dr. Koshy and I are going to be working mostly in the operating rooms. We'll be training other surgeons. We'll be tripling the amount of volume that we're doing in the next year. We're opening up Methodist Northeast Hospital's brand new HOPD. That stands for Hospital Outpatient Department. It has just been designated as an epicenter by Intuitive Surgical for women's outpatient surgery. Lots of cool things coming. We're going to have opening video for the ribbon cutting for the HOPD coming. You'll be part of that too.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Yes, I will.

Dr. Crockett: So y'all stay tuned. We are having just so much happening here. But before we get too further into that, could you just tell our listeners, our patients, your background a little bit, where you came from, and what your education level is, and who you are?

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Absolutely. So obviously my name is Sonia Koshy. I am born and raised in Texas. I'm from Houston. I am finally back after a long time. So I went to college and grad school in Houston, but then I left for medical school. I went to Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine. After that, I finished my residency at the University of Toledo, and I did a minimally invasive gynecologic surgery fellowship in South Florida, just outside of Miami.

Dr. Crockett: That's I love Florida. They've got incredible training programs in Florida.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Yes, they do. I actually worked with a team of four GYN oncologists as well as a minimally invasive trained faculty member. So it was a great experience. Now I am finally back in my home state where I belong.

Dr. Crockett: Getting to put into practice what you've been training for all these years.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Dr. Crockett: So I'm pretty excited about this. I did not go through fellowship training for robots. I'm what you call a goat. I started in 2009 and learned as it was being introduced. So to have somebody that's fellowship trained now coming in is super exciting for me. I'm looking forward to learning what you have learned from your mentors and your teachers. I'm looking forward to sharing with you and our viewers what I do. One of the things we were just talking about, as a matter of fact, is we're getting ready to launch more teaching videos on this channel.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Yes.

Dr. Crockett: So we'll still be bringing some of the wellness stuff to you. But I want to start showing you videos of what we're doing, talking a little bit more about what we do in benign gynecology. We do a lot of fertility work, a lot of fibroids, endometriosis and all that. This new era is not just me having somebody like you coming in. It's my practice changing from being one of doing a whole lot to actually reaching out and teaching and do case observations and all those things. So welcome.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Thank you.

Dr. Crockett: I wanted to talk with you a little bit about things beyond just the operating room.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Absolutely.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah. Tell me a little bit about your philosophy about being a doctor, and what other things do you like? I think our patients like to know that we're fun people behind.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Sure. That we're human beings, not just doctors.

Dr. Crockett: Yes.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: I mean, that kind of all starts into the reasons why you enter medicine. I think a lot of it is when you go through experiences with family members and things, you remember the people that made you feel heard. That made you feel as though –

Dr. Crockett: Heard.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Heard, absolutely.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah, not hurt.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: No, not hurt. Heard. Heard. You remember the clinicians, the physicians that really took care of you and took care of your family as though you weren't just a number. That, I think, is the biggest motivator for my initial reason for even entering into medicine.

Then as you go through the process, women's health is really just an area that it hits close to home because it's your own life. It's your mother, it's your sisters, it's your grandmother, it's your children. Every part of your day-to-day existence is affected by that. As a woman, I feel like that's something that we're all called to do something. I feel like I could do well in that area.

Dr. Crockett: Of taking care of women.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Absolutely.

Dr. Crockett: You know, I kind of came to that kind of similarly. I initially wanted to be a plastic surgeon and ended up in women's health. I have just really enjoyed taking care of my patients. I just think it's a really exciting time to be in the field of gynecology and specializing like we are.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Absolutely.

Dr. Crockett: One of the things that strikes me about you, I think we have a lot of similarities, but one of them is we've had some conversations about how we think about family values and also about, you used a term being honored as a physician and not having that thing put on you about what is the word you used?

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Oh, the honorifics? Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: Honorifics, yeah.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Rather than, I mean, obviously being a physician, I consider that an honor that I want to hold myself to the standard that not just in society, but also in the aspect of caring for people and really interacting with people on a day-to-day basis. I'm not your doctor. I'm Sonia first. I'm who I am and everything that makes me. I want to be that person.

Of course, I'm the physician in the room that I see you in the operating room, that I take care of you, but really and truly as a friend, as a human being, sitting side by side with someone and hearing the problem that they have. Because that's something that in women's care, exactly what you said, that we're not just men with hormones.

A lot of the new things that have come out about endometriosis, chronic pelvic pain, and where before things were dismissed as related to psychiatric issues or depression. Really it's been more recent times that we've found the medical reason behind these things.

Dr. Crockett: The physiology and all that.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Absolutely. I want to hear people as the story that they tell and what they communicate because I recognize that is really what's going to help treat people.

Dr. Crockett: Well, I think that's part of why we've been a good fit. I think there's lots of reasons why we've kind of hit it off, and I'm really excited about this. I think we have a similar kind of attitude in taking care of people.

In fact, I have a lot of times patients will come in and they'll say like, you're the first doctor that ever really listened to me. It's typical for an endometriosis patient to go through at least seven or eight.

I'm seeing more of my referring docs reaching out to me going I don't know how to handle this. Or the other doctors this patient has seen don't know how to handle this. Do you have this level of care for us? I'm starting to see that kind of question come in through our Instagram and our Facebook. So the media is helping us reach people to get them the care that they need.

I love your, I don't want to call it humility because it's not like this false sense of, it's just you're a really natural person that's easy to talk to. I think that's part of what patients need, especially when they're coming into a practice like ours for surgery. They haven't been with us for 20 years. They're coming in to meet us for the first time. It's important to me that they feel comfortable, kind of get to know us from this video being shown on the TV in the waiting room so that they see us as real people.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Right. Thank you. I appreciate that because that's what I want to communicate. I don't want to be this unapproachable shell of a person that is just a role, but I want to be someone that people can trust and people can see that I want the best for you. I want whatever is going to fix the problem that you came in with.

Dr. Crockett: Yeah. So we have that in common, but we also have two other things in common that we found out at lunch. We had lunch before this, like I usually do. Those of y'all who've been with us know that we usually do a mostly whole food, plant-based lunch.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: It was delicious, by the way.

Dr. Crockett: Thank you. It was fun. We did a French pasta thing. We'll put some B-roll up for that. But during that, we found out we have two other things in common, which I thought were pretty random.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Yes. Scuba diving was a new thing.

Dr. Crockett: Scuba diving, right. So when I lived in South Florida, it was during training, I did get scuba certified. I did one of those out of in Mexico dives that hopefully you survive it. I did. Then I was hooked. So I got scuba certified and oh, I love it.

Dr. Crockett: It's super cool.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: It's a whole different world down there.

Dr. Crockett: It's really amazing. It's like flying, right?

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Yeah.

Dr. Crockett: So I've always loved the water, and I'd always wanted to get scuba certified. I only did about five years ago, and it's just really cool. Then I've taken some of my kids to learn how to. My baby, Ryan, who's at A&M now. My baby, he's like 22. He wants to now be a marine biologist.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: That's incredible.

Dr. Crockett: Because he just loves the whole thing. So I'm so proud of him. It's pretty cool. Then the other thing that we have in common is one I'm kind of embarrassed about, but y'all need to know that we're human too and we have our flaws. Like Diet Coke, man.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Oh man.

Dr. Crockett: So right now I'm down to like the little cans, a couple of sips, maybe before clinic, which is twice a week.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: I'm not down to that.

Dr. Crockett: The other, we know there's nothing good in that.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: No, it’s all chemicals.

Dr. Crockett: Like, it gives me headaches. There's no nutrition in it. Yeah. I think that's funny. I told the story of how I got through medical school on Diet Coke because I used to drink a six pack a day because I didn't drink coffee until I was in residency.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: So I think that may be what's also in common. Because I really didn't, I don't drink coffee very often. So I think it was when you're tired. Okay. I need a little pick me up. If you don't drink coffee, you don't care for the taste of it. I think at that point. Yeah. Well, Diet Coke is an alternative.

Dr. Crockett: It’s an alternative.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Yeah. It was pretty bad in grad school actually. One of our friends would know if they needed a favor from me, they'd bring me a bag of Jolly Ranchers and a Diet Coke. Terrible combination on the teeth. Ask my dentist.

Dr. Crockett: Okay. So don't be drinking those sodas.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: I had to give up Jolly Ranchers because teeth.

Dr. Crockett: Sugar. Teeth are important. I love Jolly Ranchers. It's been a long time since I thought about that. That's funny. So what we're replacing that with are things that are healthy.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: Yes. Yes.

Dr. Crockett: So one of the things that we just started launching recently for our practice is the vitamin line called Virtuosa vitamins. You can go to virtuosavitamins.com, and we'll put those tags in the notes below, but we've developed this vitamin line. I'm going to be doing a full show on this within the next couple of weeks. My producer Starley is like saying like today she wants that recorded.

It's not a thousand different vitamins. We are launching the world's first boutique curated vitamin line is what we're calling it. We have 12 products, maybe adding a few more, but what we've done is we've used a manufacturer that I've used for about two decades that follows FDA manufacturing guidelines. So we know the quality of the product is there.

We've rebranded their product to our own branding, but we've modified the packaging so that you have what you need all dosed correctly in the packs. Then all the pieces of the 12 different vitamins that we have fit together. So you don't have to worry about overdosing or double dosing or not having the right thing. For me, that was important.

Those are the two things my patients kept coming in and asking, which was what do I need to take? And beyond just eating more whole food plant-based, getting your good sleep, getting your exercise, doing your stress management, supplementing what you're not getting with high quality supplements and making sure that you're getting the right thing and not overlapping them.

So we had an interesting little talk. I'm excited that you have some ideas along those lines about some products that we haven't created yet in our line. I'm not going to spoil that now. I'm just going to tell y'all we may add one or two or maybe three products in the next year as we get going. The website is new. The store is new. You can buy the product in our office or online at virtuosavitamins.com. Please be patient with us because we are going through the launching of distribution and all that. That's a learning process too, but we're really proud of that. So.

Dr. Sonia Koshy: It’s exciting.

Dr. Crockett: It is exciting, right?

Dr. Sonia Koshy: A lot of exciting things, yeah.

Dr. Crockett: I love that you have the same kind of entrepreneurial idea. Like when we started talking about this downstairs, you were like oh yeah, I've been doing this one and doing this one and putting this together with a very similar idea, like creating your own set of what needs to be done for specific things. So that was a pleasant surprise for me too.

So we are welcoming in the new, for sure. The new era, the new office, the new HOPD, the new doctor, and a new era in education for women's surgery, both for you and for other surgeons. We are just so grateful for our viewers who are coming along with us for this ride. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your comments and liking and sharing and subscribing. we look forward to seeing you and helping you in the office and providing you more education coming on the channel within the next hundred episodes. So thanks you guys. Have a wonderful week, and we'll see you later. Bye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Becoming Virtuosa. To learn more, come visit us at DrCrockett.com, or find us on YouTube for the Dr. Crockett Show. If you found this episode helpful or think it might help someone else, please like, subscribe, and share. This is how we grow together. Thanks, and I'll see you next week. Love always, Sue.

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