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 back to Meet the Doctor. My name's Eva Sheie and my guest this afternoon, live in Miami is Dr. Mark Scheinberg. He's a board certified obgyn. And I assume you don't deliver babies anymore, is that right? 

Dr. Scheinberg (00:45):
Oh, I still deliver babies. 

Eva Sheie (00:47):
You do? 

Dr. Scheinberg (00:47):
Absolutely. 

Eva Sheie (00:48):
Oh, how wonderful. 

Dr. Scheinberg (00:49):
I've been delivering babies for 50 years. I shouldn't say that. That makes me look old. 

Eva Sheie (00:54):
You don't look old at all. 

Dr. Scheinberg (00:55):
Thank you. 

Eva Sheie (00:56):
Wow. So how many babies do you deliver every week now?

Dr. Scheinberg (01:01):
I probably just do a couple of months, but I delivered over 8,000 babies. 

Eva Sheie (01:07):
All here in Miami? 

Dr. Scheinberg (01:08):
No, all around the country. I've done it during my training, but I've been here since 1978, so probably around 6,500, something like that in South Florida. 

Eva Sheie (01:22):
So your babies are walking around all over the city.

Dr. Scheinberg (01:25):
I deliver the babies of the babies I've delivered. 

Eva Sheie (01:28):
My goodness. Wow, that's remarkable. So 50 years. There's a lot for me to unpack there. Where do we start? Tell me about your training first and what was it like back then in the seventies to be doing this job? 

Dr. Scheinberg (01:49):
To me, it's my passion. It's my art. So I've always looked at trying to do better and better and better and better and more knowledgeable, and it just keeps going. To me, it's almost part of my soul right now. I can predict when someone's going to start labor. I can predict when they're going to deliver sometimes within 10 minutes just because it's just part of me. I've been doing it for so long. 

Eva Sheie (02:18):
You've seen it all and you've seen it all many, many, many times. 

Dr. Scheinberg (02:22):
So to me, obstetrics became an art, and as I started getting a little bit more of age, I decided to expand my art, and that's how I got into cosmetic plastic gynecology. 

Eva Sheie (02:37):
So about when did you start doing that? Because that's a rather new field, especially if you've been doing it for 50 years. 

Dr. Scheinberg (02:45):
Well, there was always occasionally a patient that needed something done, but I didn't really get into it until the mid two thousands, around 2006, 2007, where I decided that I'm going to diminish my obstetrics. I wanted another area of art to go into, and this seemed like a fit. So I took a course and started doing, and then I came in contact, serendipitously, with the number one person in the world and cosmetic plastic gynecology. And I actually kind of became a protege and have trained with him for hundreds and hundreds of hours, which allowed me to learn and perfect my techniques. 

Eva Sheie (03:30):
Can you tell us who that was or 

Dr. Scheinberg (03:32):
His name is Adam Ostrzenski, who again is world renowned, but it's through him. I got the ability to lecture around the world. I've lectured in eight countries, six states. I'm on the team that discovered the G-spot. 

Eva Sheie (03:49):
Is that a joke? 

Dr. Scheinberg (03:50):
No, it's the number one. Number one read article in the world from the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and I'm the fifth author, but I was there when it all happened. In fact, I was taking the photos as he was doing the dissections, et cetera. I have permission to work on fresh cadavers at the University of Warsaw in Poland. 

Eva Sheie (04:15):
How many times have you been over there to do that? 

Dr. Scheinberg (04:17):
Probably about a dozen now. 

Eva Sheie (04:20):
So when you're lecturing around the world, who are you teaching and who's listening to those? 

Dr. Scheinberg (04:25):
Obstetricians, gynecologists, surgeons, plastic surgeons, urologists. 

Eva Sheie (04:31):
So this is all at academic meetings and 

Dr. Scheinberg (04:34):
Yes. 

Eva Sheie (04:34):
Yeah. 

Dr. Scheinberg (04:35):
Yes. 

Eva Sheie (04:36):
What's the weirdest place you've ever taught a course? 

Dr. Scheinberg (04:40):
The weirdest place, I guess, China. That was really strange. They have guest masks in the hotel rooms. I thought that was really strange. 

Eva Sheie (04:51):
It's just standard's like,  

Dr. Scheinberg (04:52):
Yeah, standard. 

Eva Sheie (04:54):
Here's your ice bucket and your gas mask. Huh? So in China they're doing cosmetic gynecology too? 

Dr. Scheinberg (05:01):
Well, most of the people there were from other countries, but that's where it was. It was in hunan province by the beach. 

Eva Sheie (05:12):
So this has kind of taken you around the world? 

Dr. Scheinberg (05:14):
Yes, yes. 

Eva Sheie (05:17):
In terms of how many patients you've been able to help with this procedure, could you even guess, I mean, we are at 8,000 babies, but what about women? 

Dr. Scheinberg (05:27):
Well, my cosmetic plastic gynecology, I've been focusing on for the last 15 plus years, and I do principally two types of surgeries. One is vaginal reconstruction. You have women that have had two, three babies, sometimes four babies, sometimes nine pound babies. And it does really doesn't number on the vaginal canal. My wife hates my analogy, but I analogize it to a steel belted tire where you've got the steel belt that gives its shape in its form, and you have the tread, which is very flexible and stretchable and has the grooves that causes friction. When you tear the steel belt, you get bulging of the tread, which increases the surface area and takes away the grooves. So you get an acquired sensation of smooth wide vagina. Now the vagina is also connected six ways. It's connected on the apex by the cervix. It's connected on the entrance. It's connected on the bladder side, the rectum side, and the two lateral sides. And so in doing this, you have to evaluate each of those areas, see where the tears are, and I do what's called site-specific defect repair in which I will kind of open the tread, see the steel belt, and fix the tears where the tears are. So it's more complex than a lot of people out there who are trying to do this, really understand. 

Eva Sheie (07:04):
The car analogies come up a lot with doctors and specifically with male doctors because it's just how you think. I don't think there's anything right or wrong about it, but I can see why your wife rolls her eyes because we need a female analogy for what's happening. That's not, the tire is not something that's relatable to us. 

Dr. Scheinberg (07:24):
The idea is the bulge where you have a defect causing a bulge, and that's where you get prolapsing, the bladder prolapse, the anterior prolapse, you get that bulge there.

Eva Sheie (07:38):
Yeah.

Dr. Scheinberg (07:38):
 And fixing the underlying structure so that you lose the bulge and you get back. The friction element is very important. And so I tell patients and make 'em back the way they were when they were 18 before they had their kids. So that's one aspect of what I do. The other is typically labia minora, labia majora, the outsides, that's usually more cosmetic, but typically when they're, that large patients complain that it bothers them. It gets caught in their underwear or it gets pinched when they have sex. And I've developed a technique of being able to repair the inter labia so that it has a natural look. It's diminished, it hides the suture lines and it's safe. I developed a method to prevent the complication that was typically there before. And that's my pride and joy. And I was going to publish this about three years ago when I found out that there was a doctor in China who had had a similar concept, and that kind of blew the wind out of my sails for publishing. It didn't look as good as mine, but it still, it was there already. I've, since this past year, I made an agreement with an Indian professor that if I lectured in India and gave a course that he would get me published. And I gave the course last year. And I understand it's getting peer reviewed now, so it may be out there and some other people may be able to do that, but right now, I'm the only person in the country who can do it. 

Eva Sheie (09:22):
It does take a little time to go through that process, isn't it? 

Dr. Scheinberg (09:26):
There were a lot of people who think they can do this. They take a weekend course. I took a weekend course when I first started. 

Eva Sheie (09:31):
Well, you were starting from a much further along place than most of the people taking weekend courses. 

Dr. Scheinberg (09:38):
Well, I was a gynecologist, but little did I know to understand the anatomy. Even as a gynecologist, I didn't know, I dunno how plastic surgeons do it because it's more complicated than when you think you can't just go snip, snip and cut. So the training that I had when I tell patients or I write questions and answers for real self, and I'll always answer at the end, you have to do your homework. It's not how many cases you do, how well will you trained to do them? Okay. Do you understand the anatomy? When I first started out, there was a lady who had come to the professor to train also, but she had done like 600 cases and she did 600 cases probably poorly until she got that extra training. And now she's improved quite a bit. But if you don't have the training and if you don't understand the way things are put together, then you're not going to get the quality of results. 

Eva Sheie (10:40):
So as a patient, what can we look for if this is something that we're considering? 

Dr. Scheinberg (10:46):
The things to look for first is what's the training? How much training did they have? Where did they get their training? The next, look at the before and after pictures. Get 30, 40, 50 before and after pictures. Look for people who look similar to yourself and see what kind of work they do. Look at the reviews. If people have poor reviews, then they're not going to get there. I have patients who write out, well, my doctor didn't want to show me any pictures right now. I said, run. 

(11:18)
Everybody thinks they can do it. They can just go snip, snip and you're going to run into problems. You have some people that take too much off. I have one patient that had a Barbie look, well, that base opened. She had an exposed nerve and couldn't sit down for a year. Yeah, it really breaks my heart, the complications that come to my office because the doctors really didn't understand the anatomy and understand what they were doing. I tell people, go see other people, see what the difference is between their consults. So how well do they explain what's going on. I have a lot of patients come in that said, well, I went to this doctor. He spent 10 minutes with me. He says, they're going to do this, this and the other thing. That's not what I do. When I have patients come in, I spend a good deal of time. Those patients are there an hour, hour and a half for a free consult. And the reason I do that is because I look for two things. When I do my surgery, I'm old enough, I don't have to do this anymore. To me, it's my art. And so I look for two things with my patients. One, I call a Cheshire smile, Alice in Wonderland? 

Eva Sheie (12:25):
Sure.

Dr. Scheinberg (12:25):
I want my cat, I want that patient grinning like the Alice in Wonderland cat, grinning from ear to ear. I'm not happy when my patient says, oh, that looks good. I'm only happy when they say, wow. That's what I'm looking for. The second thing is knowledge. I want them understanding. When I go in and they're working on the insides, I show them their bladder. I show them the movement of the urethra when they cough so they can understand what's going on, why the urine's doing and what I'm going to do to fix that. I show them the racal, the hernia, the bowels that come in from the top. If you don't know how to take care of that, you can't fix the bottom part, which is where most of the wideness comes from. So in dealing with the insides, they know what's wrong, what kind of work needs to be done, what I'm going to do. 

(13:15)
They're extremely well taught in my office, both by myself and by my head nurse because there she teaches them about how you take care of yourself, what kind of medicines to use, when as you're recovering, all kinds of little tricks to make things go better. We are like mother hens, we call them that night. We call them the next day. We call 'em the next day. They get my personal phone number. So if anything comes up, they can call me directly so that they have all the information, they have peace of mind in knowing I'm there for them. And it's not just a thing to me. That's what I'm looking at. That's the way I get my wow. That's the way I get my results is being right up on top of everything so that I can make sure that everything runs smoothly. 

Eva Sheie (14:02):
It seems to me that, wow, is it both a combination of how it looks, but also how it feels and how it changed our lives? 

Dr. Scheinberg (14:11):
The patients, I'll tell you, my patients come in, they cry. They say, my life is different. I couldn't believe I look like this. I can't believe that their lives are changed. If you take a look at the reviews that I have with RealSelf and I must have about 40, 50, and they'll say everything is different, well, that's what I look for. That's why I am doing my work. Otherwise, I'd just be retired and go on my merry way. 

Eva Sheie (14:38):
What do you like to do outside of work? Do golf or? 

Dr. Scheinberg (14:41):
I used to, when my mom was alive, I used to golf with her, but I go skiing. I would like to go traveling. I'd like to go down to Colorado and stuff like that. I used to go surf sailing and stuff like that. I live in South Florida, so 

Eva Sheie (14:57):
Sure.

Dr. Scheinberg (14:57):
Try and take care of that. 

Eva Sheie (14:59):
You're wearing a really beautiful pin. What is that pin? 

Dr. Scheinberg (15:02):
Oh, that I got from my 50th year reunion from medical school. 

Eva Sheie (15:08):
Okay. And where did you go to medical school? 

Dr. Scheinberg (15:10):
I went to the State University of New York At Buffalo. 

Eva Sheie (15:14):
Buffalo. So were you ever a Bills fan? 

Dr. Scheinberg (15:18):
No. 

Eva Sheie (15:19):
Okay. Good. Football at all? 

Dr. Scheinberg (15:22):
Well, now I'm down here. I've had Miami Dolphin tickets for 20 some odd years, but I've had to go to different places. So when I was in New Orleans in training for a couple of years, I was a Saints fan. And then I did three years at Washington. And so I was a Redskins fan when they called them the Redskins. And then I came down here when I was trained up in New York. I was a Jets fan when they won the 69 Super Bowl, and I've been a Miami Dolphin fan since 1978 when I came down here. 

Eva Sheie (15:54):
So fun. 

Dr. Scheinberg (15:56):
I love it. 

Eva Sheie (15:58):
And what about your family? Who's your team at home? 

Dr. Scheinberg (16:02):
Well, my wife Niecy is just fantastic. It's a long story on how I met her. She was actually conjured, but I traveled 5,000 miles to where I encountered her and I had to keep going back and back to Brazil over and over again to woo her as it were. I learned Portuguese. Within months I would be on the phone with dictionaries, et cetera. I now speak fluent Portuguese, I've been speaking fluent Portuguese. I had to do that to try and convince her to come here. And we've been married for 30 plus years. 

Eva Sheie (16:40):
How many years did it take you to convince her? 

Dr. Scheinberg (16:44):
It was something like six months. 

Eva Sheie (16:48):
You learned Portuguese in six months?

Dr. Scheinberg (16:50):
I learned Portuguese in three months. It wasn't the best Portuguese, but I was able to communicate those phone calls. Back then you had to pay for your phone call. So it cost me like 500 bucks a month. 

Eva Sheie (17:00):
Investment. 

Dr. Scheinberg (17:01):
Yeah, I got an apartment. I got a car down there. One of the things that I was down there is I like to say the world is an illusion. It works by magic and the magic is perception. And so you learn how to, what I was down there doing was teaching. I was a student part of the group, teaching people how to adjust your perception so that you can change the way your reality goes. And that's essentially what happened when I met Niecy. I was enthralled and I used the magic formula. The magic formula is you have to have the will. You have to have a mechanism, you have to have the enthusiasm, and you have to put in the work. And if you put those four things together, you can do almost anything. Well, I learned Portuguese and I met my wife and I convinced her to fall in love with me and come back here. 

Eva Sheie (17:58):
And these kids, they're like, I don't know if he likes me. Do you think he likes me? And you're like the perfect case in point, when they like you, they won't go away. They just keep coming back. 

Dr. Scheinberg (18:09):
I did. 

Eva Sheie (18:09):
That's how you know. Well done Dr. Scheinberg. 

Dr. Scheinberg (18:13):
Well, thank you. Thank you. I'm the lucky one. We've been married for 30 years. We have three kids and it's fantastic. The interesting thing I say the magic of it. I'm a doctor. She was a nurse. I had had two children from a prior marriage. There were four and six, what was going to happen to them, et cetera, because I knew that I had to leave that circumstances. And my daughter took five minutes and my son took, my four-year-old son, took a day and a half to bond with her, and now we have another one afterwards, and the three of them are as just tight and close as can be. And that's just because she's so wonderful. 

Eva Sheie (18:56):
I love it. What a beautiful story. Well, if we're listening today and interested in finding out more about you or potentially becoming a patient, where should we look for you online? 

Dr. Scheinberg (19:08):
Well, you can look up cosmetic laser gynecology.com or cosmetic laser gyn.com. 

Eva Sheie (19:15):
There's a laser in there. We didn't talk about lasers. 

Dr. Scheinberg (19:19):
People think that if you get a laser's, a gimmick, the only thing I can really use a laser for is like it's making like those grooves. But everybody thinks, oh, laser. Oh, laser or laser. The truth of the matter is if you use a laser, a laser works by a burn. I can get a narrower scar with a fresh edge than I can with the burn. But since everybody used it, this is way back when. And I actually used laser when I first started because that was the course that I had taken. But really it doesn't really do very much. It saves you maybe a test tube full of blood difference in bleeding when you do that. But that's the website. Or you can go to the Center for Cosmetic and Reconstructive Gynecology. That's my corporation. And if you go, you'll see it'll go to cosmetic laser, G Y N. You have to have a website.  

Eva Sheie (20:15):
Do you train other doctors? 

Dr. Scheinberg (20:17):
Yes. I've lectured in eight countries, in six states. 

Eva Sheie (20:22):
Can they come see you? Can they come shadow you or mentor? 

Dr. Scheinberg (20:27):
I haven't advertised myself out there to do that. If somebody wanted to, they could. I don't mind. I love to teach. I teach my patients. I have people that watch it. But if you want to do it right, you need to be proctored. And I'm available to proctor if somebody wanted to learn it. But as I said, most people out there, they think they know what they're doing just by taking a course, and it's really much, much more involved than that. 

Eva Sheie (20:54):
Thank you for sharing so much of yourself with us today. It's been really a privilege to hear about your amazing career. 

Dr. Scheinberg (21:01):
Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to meet you. 

Eva Sheie (21:08):
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.