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's 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. Welcome to Meet the Doctor. My guest today is Garrett Wegerif. He's a plastic surgeon in Miami, Florida. Welcome to the podcast. 

Dr. Wegerif (00:40):
Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Looking forward to this. 

Eva Sheie (00:44):
So we had the privilege of speaking to one of your colleagues a few weeks ago, and that was Dr. Alex Earle. 

Dr. Wegerif (00:51):
Yes. 

Eva Sheie (00:52):
And I understand that you just went to work with that team. Is that pretty recent for you? 

Dr. Wegerif (00:57):
That's correct. I joined Pure Plastic Surgery back in August. 

Eva Sheie (01:01):
What were you doing before that? 

Dr. Wegerif (01:03):
I was at another practice up in the Fort Lauderdale area, also cosmetic plastic surgery. 

Eva Sheie (01:11):
So what made you decide to join Pure? 

Dr. Wegerif (01:15):
So I actually knew Dr. Earle from my general surgery training at Cleveland Clinic, Florida, and we had an opportunity to meet when he was an attending plastic surgeon there. And I was a general surgery resident and we happened to reconnect at a plastic surgery dinner down here in Miami back at the beginning of last summer and kind of started talking from then. And I really had enjoyed my time with Dr. Earle at Cleveland Clinic and I knew he was a great surgeon and he had put together a really nice practice. And so when he presented me with the opportunity to come work with him, I jumped on that.

Eva Sheie (01:53):
I think talked to him. I can see why you did that. So was there something about the work he was doing that piqued your curiosity that made you want to go in that direction? 

Dr. Wegerif (02:04):
Well, in general, when you're looking for a job and people to work with, it starts with the relationship you may have with them or just knowing their character and knowing him from Cleveland Clinic and just very positive things everybody had said about him throughout that time. There was a good starting point for establishing that relationship. But then after following him on social media, pure plastic surgery, when I was even still in my plastic surgery training out at the University of New Mexico, I just saw how his practice was run, how he had a super focus on safety and that's what I wanted for my future practice and for my patients. And so I just thought it was an overall great fit. 

Eva Sheie (02:52):
I know he's very focused on the practice as a whole is very focused on body surgery, body contouring. And is that true for you too, or are you mostly focused on body procedures? 

Dr. Wegerif (03:04):
That is true for me at this point in my career. I am focused on mostly breast and body for both men and women, but not to remove the possibility of doing more facial plastic surgery in the future. But at this point in my career, I really want to perfect these procedures of the breast and body before I move on to tackling the face and rhinoplasties. 

Eva Sheie (03:28):
You said earlier that you spent some time in New Mexico, and I've heard that a couple of times and I feel like there's something unique about practicing or training in New Mexico around the kinds of patients and the population that you're able to see there. Am I remembering that right? 

Dr. Wegerif (03:45):
It really is. So New Mexico is a kind of poor state and they don't have a whole bunch of academic healthcare systems there. So the University of New Mexico, which is based out of Albuquerque, is the main medical hub there for the state. And it also encompasses parts of Colorado, parts of Arizona and parts of Texas. So we have a really broad engagement of a patient population that we serve there, and we're really the only academic center in the state. So you get to see a wide variety of pathologies and get to treat a lot of different patients and really get a great training experience there. 

Eva Sheie (04:28):
Was this when you realized that you were thinking you might head towards aesthetics was during that time or was that at a different time in your career? 

Dr. Wegerif (04:39):
I had had an interest in cosmetics and aesthetics throughout my training, but it definitely focused my attention onto that even more after my time out at New Mexico, I had an opportunity to work with some great community, guys that were doing a lot of cosmetic plastic surgery, and I just love the patient side of it, the business side of it, and getting that opportunity to make that change in a patient's life and getting out of academics a little bit. 

Eva Sheie (05:12):
Was there a specific experience, a patient or a moment or did something happen in particular that really made you think I know exactly what I'm going to do next? 

Dr. Wegerif (05:24):
Yeah, I think the profound change that plastic surgery can have on a patient to help them regain their confidence is what really pushed me in that direction. Seeing that immediate result and being able to really help a patient regain their confidence is what did that for me. And I think the most profound times that you see that is either with mommy makeovers for patients that have had several kids and they just want to reclaim their body of their youth or also a lot with massive weight loss patients, which holds a special place in my heart because during my time in general surgery training, I did a lot of weight loss surgery and also a patient group that just gets such a profound change in their life from having these procedures that we're able to offer them. 

Eva Sheie (06:18):
They do say weight loss surgery patients are the happiest patients that there are because you're just coming from such a different place, you've already changed so much and your life is already so much better that everything after that is just kind of extra. 

Dr. Wegerif (06:33):
It really is. It's especially unique for us because we come in at the end of the journey after they've put in a lot of that work, they've had their weight loss surgery, they've lost the weight, and this is some of the final steps to really achieve what their goal has been for a long time. And it's really rewarding to be a part of that final step. 

Eva Sheie (06:52):
And now you get to build relationships with those patients because I think sometimes they're staged or some of those procedures take carried out over a long period of time. 

Dr. Wegerif (07:02):
Absolutely. Depending on the patient and what their goals are and how much weight they've lost, there can be a lot of different areas that we have to tackle and focus on. And yeah, it's definitely done in a staged approach to keep everything safe and minimize complications. And so yeah, they're oftentimes long-term patients and you really build a meaningful relationship with them. 

Eva Sheie (07:25):
What's usually the first thing that they want to do? Is there something that they all have in common in that regard? 

Dr. Wegerif (07:31):
I think primarily the biggest thing is the abdomen is a source of concern for them, especially if they truly have a lot of hanging skin that's causing skin irritation and other problems. That's usually the first starting point. But different patients have different goals and men and women have different goals, but a weight loss patient, we can do their abdomen, we can do their arms, we can do their thighs, we can do their breast. And even for men, if they have hanging skin from their chest, we can offer them surgery for their chest as well. So there's a lot we can do for them. 

Eva Sheie (08:07):
We just did a long conversation about that exact thing and I called it make polo shirts great again, because we were talking about how polo shirts never look good if you have man boobs. 

Dr. Wegerif (08:21):
Yeah, that's definitely a tough problem for weight loss patients and not only weight loss patients, and that's another focus of mine that I hope to build a practice with male patients because within plastic surgery, it's up and coming and it's becoming more popular for men to do it. But I think there's a huge opportunity for men to really embrace plastic surgery to help them achieve their goals because it's not only women that have self-image issues, it's men as well, and we can help them with that journey. And there's a lot of different variations of how we can do that. From the most extreme cases where we have men that had massive weight loss to men that are relatively fit, that just have a few areas of stubborn fat that they want to address, I think there's a real opportunity for them to have improvement in their self-image by seeking plastic surgery. 

Eva Sheie (09:19):
Do you find that men in Miami are more open to this than in maybe other parts of the country? 

Dr. Wegerif (09:27):
Yeah, I definitely think Miami is more suited to being a pioneer in this market versus other parts of the country. A lot of beaches down here, a lot of activities where you're walking around without a shirt on and there's a lot of fitness and health conscious personalities down here that would probably drive that more in this market more so than some others. 

Eva Sheie (09:50):
Yeah, certainly I would think the weather is a huge driving factor in that you can't wear a sweater really very often in that part of the world, so. 

Dr. Wegerif (10:00):
Yeah, there's very select days when you can wear a sweater down in Miami. 

Eva Sheie (10:04):
I know, but isn't it fun when that happens? 

Dr. Wegerif (10:07):
It is. We enjoy those days a lot. Everybody busts out their boots and their jackets and take full advantage of that. 

Eva Sheie (10:12):
I got my best hoodie on today. Yeah, it just happened here the other day, but only for a couple hours. I'm in Austin. It was cool in the morning, so I put on long sleeves and it's so fun. 

Dr. Wegerif (10:24):
Very nice. Yeah. Yeah, we love the cold snaps down in Florida. 

Eva Sheie (10:28):
As long as they're not too cold, just a little. 

Dr. Wegerif (10:30):
Yeah. 

Eva Sheie (10:32):
So did you live anywhere other than New Mexico and Florida, what other parts of the world have you been a part of? 

Dr. Wegerif (10:40):
So primarily Florida, New Mexico. I was born and raised in Florida up in Merrit Island, Florida, which is near Cape Canaveral where NASA is, where they shoot out the space shuttles. And then I did my undergraduate at the University of South Florida over near Tampa. And then I actually did a Caribbean medical school called Ross University. And at the time that you did your first 16 months down in Dominica, so I spent 16 months in Dominica and then came back to the US to do all my clinical rotations. 

Eva Sheie (11:10):
Did you get to go outside while you were there or did they just keep you locked up? 

Dr. Wegerif (11:15):
I was pretty focused on learning the material and passing my exams and getting back to the United States, so I didn't do too much exploring and traveling there, but I did do a little bit in the island of Dominica is actually a very beautiful place. It's called the Nature Island, and it's one of the highest elevations in the southern Caribbean and very, very interesting place. Unfortunately, they had a hurricane come through, I believe in 2017 or 18 that really messed up the infrastructure in the school, and so they actually moved the school to Barbados. 

Eva Sheie (11:50):
Wow. Do you think you'll ever go back there?  

Dr. Wegerif (11:53):
Yeah. I would love to go back to Dominica. I would love to see how the island is actually one of my lifelong aspirations is to either get a trawler or a sailboat and spend a lot of time down in the Caribbean. So I would love to go there on my own boat one day. 

Eva Sheie (12:09):
So are you a sailor or a fisherman or both? 

Dr. Wegerif (12:12):
Growing up in Florida, I've done a little bit of all of it and primarily on motorboats, but the idea of a sailboat is a romantic thing that I would probably need to talk my wife into, but something that I'm definitely considering 

Eva Sheie (12:27):
See sailors, I think they think they like people to think they're out there relaxing, but sailing is a lot of work. And so that tells me something about your personality that you like to work even when you're not working. 

Dr. Wegerif (12:40):
Yes, definitely. Definitely like to work. Done plenty of work. 

Eva Sheie (12:45):
Sounds like it. And lots of training. And so it's nice to hear how far you've come and where you are now. I think you really painted a nice picture of the journey that it took you to get to this place. So I want to ask you a little bit about where you're going. You've been at Pure for a few months, you see. Is there anything that you see coming in the next year or two for patients that you find particularly exciting? 

Dr. Wegerif (13:12):
I mean the big things at Pure, we've recently gotten some new technologies for liposuction and starting to offer more high definition procedures for body contouring. And again, like I mentioned, women have always been the early adopters of these procedures, but being able to offer this more to men and being able to do more advanced procedures for body contouring is something that I'm excited about doing. So we have vaser, but we're also talking about doing more high definition things and even fat grafting to different muscle groups for men to help improve their aesthetic and really get that desired V-shape aesthetic that men are looking for. 

Eva Sheie (13:58):
I'm glad you brought this up because this is really emerging of, and I have only heard it from a small handful of surgeons over the last year, that there's this approach to moving fat around in male bodies, especially. We've been probably doing this with women for a little longer, but that if you have fat in a certain part of your body, it's better to move it than to get rid of it. And I wonder if you can maybe speak to that a little bit from the patient perspective and why that is starting to become, I think it sounds like that's going to become the standard really. 

Dr. Wegerif (14:38):
So you have to look at this in a few different contexts. One, you have to see where a patient's starting point is and understand what their goals are. If they truly just want to slim down a little bit and hit some trouble areas that are bothering them, their love handles and that's all they want to do, that's fine, especially for men. But to treat the body as a whole from a very holistic approach, we have more tools at our disposal to be able to create a more aesthetically pleasing result. If your goal is really to achieve what society deems as a pleasing male physique, we have that tool which is the fat that we take from parts of your body where it's less desirable like your love handles, and we can put it into areas like your pecs or your deltoids to enhance the contours that we can give you. And I think that is going to become a much more standard procedure in the future, especially for men, also for women, if you want a very athletic look, we can also do it for them as well. 

Eva Sheie (15:44):
I think it's a funny thing to think about fat being moved around to look more athletic because we've been sort of psychologically conditioned to believe that looking athletic means you don't have any fat, but that's actually not the case. 

Dr. Wegerif (16:01):
And actually where we're placing the fat is typically below the fascia of the muscle. So it's not like you're going to have a globby fat on your pec or your deltoid, it's going to be blending in with your muscle and actually enhancing the shape of the muscle as a whole. And I know there's probably some concern about this regarding injecting fat in or near a muscle because of the literature with Brazilian butt lifts and definitely avoiding muscle in the buttock, but other muscles in the upper body don't have those very large veins that are in the gluteus muscles that we always avoid. We even use imaging to avoid. So it's a different animal when we're talking about injecting fat in near muscles in the upper body versus the buttock. 

Eva Sheie (16:50):
That was a missing piece in my mind. I kept thinking about people who are skinny fat because they don't have any muscle, but in this case, the fat's being placed underneath. So the muscle is what is becoming more visible. 

Dr. Wegerif (17:07):
Exactly. 

Eva Sheie (17:08):
Yeah.

Dr. Wegerif (17:08):
That's making a big difference. And obviously we have to select our patients appropriately for this. Not everybody's a candidate for that type of a procedure. You need to have some degree of baseline musculature and definition that we can enhance. Then you also need to maintain those results after getting a procedure like that with proper diet and exercise after the fact to maintain those results for the longterm. 

Eva Sheie (17:34):
And I think this is where the expertise of the team you're on is really important because you would not want to go somewhere where they have not done this before or very often. And I think from my impression of Pure is that this is the kind of stuff you're doing all the time. 

Dr. Wegerif (17:53):
Yeah, so definitely it's a newer mindset to be offering these types of procedures with all of these different parts for this definition that we're talking about. And it comes with additional training and understanding and learning from the right mentors. And like you mentioned, pure is one of those places where they've been early adopters of this type of procedures and Dr. Earle has gotten advanced training in all of this and continue to work with him and train with him as a mentor to really hone my techniques for these type of procedures. 

Eva Sheie (18:31):
Sure, that sounds very exciting. If we want to learn more about Pure or about you, where can we find you online? 

Dr. Wegerif (18:41):
For Pure Plastic Surgery, you can go to pure plastic surgery.com and then for myself, you can find me online on Instagram at Dr. Garrett Wegerif. And that's just d r g a r r e t t. Last name Wegerif, w e g e r i f. And then the same handle for my TikTok, Dr. Garrett Wegerif. 

Eva Sheie (19:05):
Are you having fun on TikTok? 

Dr. Wegerif (19:07):
That's a new challenge to my career, but I am learning and starting to have some more fun with creating my TikTok content. 

Eva Sheie (19:17):
What kind of an approach are you taking to TikTok? Is it educational? Is it silly? 

Dr. Wegerif (19:24):
My perfect world, it would be mostly educational, but silly is part of the package, so I'm doing a little bit of both, but more of a bent on the educational. 

Eva Sheie (19:34):
We'll definitely check it out and I'll put links to those in the show notes so they're easy to find if you're listening and you want to see Dr. Wegerif on either Instagram or TikTok or his website. So my last question is, you told us you're a sailor, you like to fish, you're a Florida guy. Is there anything else that you like to do away from work that we need to know about? 

Dr. Wegerif (19:57):
Yeah, it's mostly being out on the water, enjoying the sunshine with my family. I'm married and I have two young kids, three and a half year old son and a almost two year old daughter. And so just spending as much time with them as possible. 

Eva Sheie (20:10):
I love it. The littles are the best. And I bet you're glad that you make your own schedule now that you have them because there's nothing better. 

Dr. Wegerif (20:21):
Yeah. It's one of the reasons that led me more to this type of a practice setting to really fit in that work-life balance, to be able to spend time with family and friends after a long road of training where you had limited control over your schedule. 

Eva Sheie (20:37):
Much better. Thank you so much, Dr. Wegerif. It was a pleasure getting to know you today. 

Dr. Wegerif (20:43):
Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk, Eva. I really appreciate it. You have a great day. 

Eva Sheie (20:49):
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.