Dr. Luis Garcia

And now I remember her name was Laura Koh.

Never met her.

But I got on the phone with Laura Koh.

I said, Laura,

Listen me out.

I said, I, this could have been the best day in my life.

It is not.

What can we do?

And I just started, you know, selling myself and this is what I want.

This is it.

And thankfully we found an opportunity for them to make an exception and to give me the whole category calip training.

But it's just those things that unless you get yourself out of your comfort zone, you never get to experience.

Yeah, Ed, so I finished general surgery at the University of North Dakota.

Then I went to do a mini fellowship in bariatric and advanced laparoscopic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh.

And I came back.

And the reason why I came back is because at the time, I trained under a J-1 visa, which is a student visa.

So in order to transition to a working visa, you needed to be in an underserved area for three years.

And it just so happened that Sanford Health at the time sponsored my visa to be in an underserved area.

So my very first position as a surgeon was in Valley City, North Dakota, 7,000 people as a solo surgeon.

I was it.