Dr. Mary Fariba Afsari

And you have to keep things ticking along.

And I just decided when I started this RV clinic that I was going to do it the way that I wanted to provide care, sort of my daydream idea of a clinic.

And in doing that, not only are my patients receiving this sort of individualized care, but I am sort of healing whatever it is that happens when you're a physician and you've worked for 15 years and there's elements of burnout and exhaustion that can happen in the traditional medical setting.

My patients are healing me.

Yeah.

So I think this girl was about, you know, 14 or 15.

You would have expected that she probably would have started her periods and she hadn't.

And what I realized over the course of the appointment was that she had a congenital anomaly where the outlet which allows blood to flow out, the hymen,

had not ever opened, and so there was blood that was trapped inside.

So most people have a tiny little, at least a pinpoint opening from the time they're young, and that's when women start their menstrual cycles, girls start their menstrual cycles, the blood is allowed to escape.

And that hadn't happened for her.

And I thought in the moment, well, this is a really simple solution.

I just have to take you to the operating room and we'll put you to sleep and we'll just open that little tissue layer and we'll allow the blood to come out and it's going to give you immediate relief.

And then her monthly cycles would be able to start.

And what I didn't expect to encounter was the pushback from her father and a real concern that a surgery like that would deem her

not a virgin.

And so we ended up in sort of a, you know, I would say maybe it's sometimes it's a faith-based conversation.

It could sometimes be cultural.

It depends on sort of the family background.

It's different for everybody.