Endofound’s Sixth Annual Medical Conference: Ending Endometriosis Starts at the Beginning
Take home messages & close
Tamer Seckin, MD
Tamer Seckin, MD: This is really a thank you speech and it is going to be very short. As I wind my tape back to five years ago when we started this I never thought we would be here for three days in a row with such a wonderful crowd, patients, medical students in the back, seven of them who were picked by the Foundation. They have been sitting here for, is it seven or ten? Thank you for staying this long we will remember that. I would like to thank all the full-time Foundation staff. Marilyn, Theresa, all of them, the ENPOWR Project runners that are going to schools we have. I could not believe that we would be doing high school children training. We are almost to 7,000 right now. We aim to do another 7,000 this year. I would like to thank New York State for supporting us. We achieved legislative support from New York State and we have been doing these projects with their help.
Overall, this disease I think after we started this I am glad to see endometriosis centers popping out in academic environments like Boston, Michigan, Puerto Rico, which is nice to see and we are getting their support. We are doing this selflessly. I do not think we surgeons can do anything without the support of scientists. At the end of these three days I want to ask who has learned something?
They asked me to tell a success story of the Foundation. This is the success story. I can say if I can keep you here for three days in a row and at the end of three days I still have this crowd that is wonderful. That is the success story.
I would like to thank Padma for being again selfless and doing everything for the Foundation. I would like to thank Dr. Harry Reich who has been a friend to me for many years. He is the new Medical Director of the Foundation, his retirement job. It is probably the best job he has ever taken. I would like to thank obviously our honorees, Dr. Batt, who has given his life to study endometriosis, as a surgeon as a scientist. When I was a resident at Buffalo they did not practice endometriosis surgery at my hospital. They were at the next hospital, St. Francis, but we all heard “they only do endometriosis surgery”. I have never understood why because in my own program I only saw one or two endometriosis surgeries, in the whole program. That is probably one of the reasons I went into this.
They asked me this question, what really made me go into this was – I was drawn and pulled back, there was no resistance in me. I just saw myself in this because when I was curious to do laparoscopy on pain I was not finding the things that people were finding. It was not PID. There was no PID at all. Then I looked around and there were many guys already on this path so I kind of searched out and befriended them. That is how my interest started very early in 1990 on endometriosis. The results I learned over the years when you excise and remove the disease, boy, it is day and night, the patients do exceptionally better! They do better. We need to use surgery as an appropriate tool, not to rush the surgery. We learned that. Just to make it short we would not here but for the patients that supported us and that taught us.
I would like to thank friends at Lenox Hill, my department chief and the Lenox Hill people here my colleagues who have closed their practices today and are spending time with me. I am very deeply indebted for their support.
I would like to thank my wife who always helps me with this. I do not know if she is around but I could understand why she is not here right now. But please tell her that I mentioned her name.
And lastly of course I want to thank Stacey and Lone. They always see Dr. Koh coming from California. Deborah Bush coming from New Zealand, Deborah that was a great exercise that you gave us.
I also want Lone to just tell you her feelings about this congress. Thank you very much for coming here. Of course I would like to thank Peter Gregerson, Christine Metz, I am certain I am forgetting names but please remember this was not intentional.
I am not going to keep you for very long now. Trying to be so strict with time but we did not quite manage to stay on schedule this morning. I want to thank Tamer Seckin because it is his vision that has enabled these meetings to take place. I think it is fantastic that Harry Reich is now the Medical Director. Harry put together this program with Tamer and myself but Harry was definitely the driving force. So I want to thank both of you for excellent collaboration and all of you for staying here for three days and contributing to the meeting. We could put together the best program in the world but if you do not contribute to it and be part of the discussion then we do not really have a meeting.
So thank you very much. Travel safely and I will see some of you at the ball tonight.
