_____________________

A Plastic Surgeon … and more

Dr. Carroll Zahorsky is a plastic surgeon in Kansas City specializing in cosmetic surgery of the face, body, and breasts. He was the first to bring the FDA approved SmartLipo to Kansas City in May, 2007. SmartLipo is now a major focus of his practice. This is the smart choice for helping people get rid of unwanted fat in those cases where diet and exercise have not worked.

Dr. Zahorsky is the founder of RE SURGENCE. This is a center of plastic surgery excellence and non-surgical care along with products and services for better living in mind, body, and spirit.
RE SURGENCE is a place of holistic reforming and reshaping those parts of you that will help in the resurgence of your living.

Dr. Zahorsky was the founder of the Zahorsky Surgical Center in Kansas City in 1972, one of the first free standing full ambulatory surgery centers in the United States… The first in Kansas City.

He was the founder of The Zahorsky Institute of Self Improvement in Kansas City in 1979, one of the first walk in and out full wellness centers in the United States.

He was the creator of one of the first major public forums focusing on choices for woman 25 years ago when he produced The Woman’s World Expo ’84, in Kansas City. That was a marvelous production and contribution to the advancement of women’s choices and options.

He hosted his own DR Z BETTER LIVING Radio Show for nearly 2 years in Kansas City in 2005 and 2006.

He has written books about plastic surgery, inspiration, motivation, and family that have left impacts on lives too immense to measure.

He has traveled and spoken to thousands and thousands of people about ways of helping them improve the quality of their lives.

SPARE International was formed by him to develop a forum for supporting and advancing the value of family in communities world wide.

He has been active in United Nations efforts to advance the Declaration of Universal Human Rights. He is actively involved in helping establish, advance, and preserve human rights and freedoms around the globe.

He has worked to develop a system for wood recycling that can have a major impact on minimizing the waste of wood and preserving our trees and rainforests. He is a strong advocate for advancing and helping preserve a healthy global environment.

He has been devoted to his family and a devoted Dad prioritizing his sons throughout all of his endeavors.

Now he has created DR Z BETTER LIVING to help improve the quality of living for people around the world because he believes “better living matters” holistically for everyone in mind, body, and spirit.

A Farm Boy From Oklahoma Had A Dream

Carroll Zahorsky grew up on an Oklahoma farm endowed with a very special heritage.

He had a great Mom and Dad who worked hard and gave everything to help their sons and daughter become the best they could be. They were devoted to each other, their family, their community and their God. They lived their lives without criticizing others and without complaints about their circumstances no matter how difficult their challenges. They prevailed over Oklahoma dust storms, hail storms, droughts, tornadoes, barely enough food to eat at times, and hardships of many kinds to plant the seeds of greatness in their eight sons and one daughter. They triumphed in life to achieve financial success. While doing so they lived with character. They lived with respect and honor in themselves, in their relationships to others, and with God.

Carroll Zahorsky is the seventh son in a family of eight boys and one girl.

He grew up poor in material things but immensely rich in embracing the ultimate value of loving, respecting, and living life to its fullest with malice toward none.

Money, clothes, things, and even food were scant during his early life, but riches were abundant as he was nurtured with principles, worth, integrity, character, decency, honor, and respect for himself, others, and God.

He was taught early to call a spade a spade. To say what you mean and do what you say. He was taught to be responsible and accountable. He was taught to stand up for what you believe to be right.

He was taught the value of setting goals. He was taught to believe in himself and dream big dreams.

Early in his life he became committed to making a difference in the world wherever his journey of life would take him. He remembers standing on a playground at a little one room country school saying to himself when he was in the 3rd grade, “I’m going to be somebody. I‘m going to help make the world a better place”.

And he has helped make the world a better place. Innumerable successes have been his. He has achieved many things. Then too, at times he has not yet accomplished some things he reached for and set out to do. He has been bent along the way when defeat has stalked him, but never broken. He continues to believe that triumph is just one step, turn, ocean, hill, or mountain away for himself and everyone who does not quit or walk away from the challenges that come one’s way.

Since his early days as a young Future Farmer of America on that Oklahoma farm he has been an entrepreneur. There he worked side by side and in harmony with a Dad he loved and respected dearly. He learned early to invest in his future.

Five dollars a day were his first wages outside of his family farm responsibilities. He took those first five dollars and bought the first of what would later become a high quality registered show hog herd. From the profits gained from those early efforts be bought calves each year which his Dad allowed him to raise to market on the family farm.

His efforts expanded and he rented some land and with the machinery shared with him by his Dad he planted crops and made still more profits. His goal … to build something of value and help prepare for investing in his future education so he could go on to explore and accomplish bigger goals of which he dreamed.

He learned to love the land as he plowed the fields and watched grow what he planted. He loved the smell of freshly tilled soil. He loved the beauty of a field of golden wheat ripe for harvest. He came to love the earth in all her beauty. He determined that throughout his life he would do all he could to preserve her. And he has and does.

Work on that Oklahoma farm was hard but he loved that farm. He loved and valued the sweat he poured into her. He loved and was grateful for the heritage with which it and those who loved him gave to him. He loved his family. He loved working in the fields with his Dad.

He loved coming in from the fields at the end of a long summer day tired, but tired in a good way. He loved knowing he had been in touch with that which was bigger than him by being in touch with the earth. He loved those moments at the end of the day sitting together on the front step feeling close to his Dad. He looked forward to seeing that strong, tireless woman, his Mom, and hear her call out, “It’s Suppertime”.

On that Oklahoma farm he learned how to give his all to get where he was choosing to go. He learned to give back what had been given to him. He learned how to count his blessings and share those blessings so others might be blessed as was he.

By the time he entered high school he knew where he was headed. He knew what he wanted to be. He had already set his sights on going to medical school to some day become a physician. He was going to become a doctor. He believed at the time he would come back home to give to his community as old Doc Enser had done for his own Dad and his health difficulties.

Little did he know in those early years that a greater dream was already unfolding that would lead him to alter those plans and go in other directions. He would serve his country as an Air Force Flight Surgeon. In due time he would become a Plastic Surgeon fulfilling the goal he had set for himself while in his second year of medical school.

In 1961, Carroll Zahorsky, against immense odds and considerable adversity, entered the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine.

In June, 1965, he became Dr. Carroll L Zahorsky, M.D. There he stood proudly, humbly, in cap and gown surrounded by his Mom, Dad, and family with that dreamed of and coveted medical degree. The rest of his life was in front of him ready to unfold before him.

An internship followed at Kansas City General Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri at the recommendation of Professor Emeritus Dr. William Middleton. From there he went on to his General Surgery training. From there he went on to complete his Plastic and Reconstructive Plastic Surgery residency.

His greatest goal yet had been achieved …. becoming a Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon.

On June 30, 1971, he walked out of Kansas City General Hospital a real Plastic Surgeon. That special place, the people who trained him, and the people who allowed him to care for them had given him six incredible years of learning how to become an accomplished plastic surgeon with special skills. That place will forever fill a precious corner in his heart. He left those halls with their mark indelibly imprinted upon his mind, body, and spirit.

His hands had touched the lives of thousands of people during the time he was there. They had touched him. To all of them he was forever in their gratitude and he vowed to give his all to honor that with which they had endowed him.

A few weeks later he entered the world of his own private practice of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in Kansas City. He would go on to experience years of reforming, reshaping, and recreating beauty. He would experience immeasurable gratification gained by giving of himself to those his skills and artistry would touch and whose quality of life would forever be changed by his hands, commitment, and creativity.

The Story Of A Special Little Boy And DR Z

Because I know what makes this man be what and who he is, there is a story I want to tell you that he shared with me a long time ago about a special little boy and DR Z …. And yes, he had tears in his eyes and difficulty getting the words out as he shared it with me just as I’m sure he would today if he were to personally tell this story to you.

J. Michael Roark

_____________________

He would hold forever dear in his heart that little 4 year old boy who reached to circle his arms around this plastic surgeon’s neck to say clearly, “I love you, Dr Z”.

It had been just a few weeks earlier that this special little boy had hardly been able to say those words at all.

For you see, he had a cleft palate birth defect that was causing him to lose air through his nose so he could not make the sounds of his words come out right when he tried to talk. No matter how hard he tried or how much speech training he had, without being able to adequately close the space between the soft palate and the back of his throat he was left with a speech defect that made it hard to understand what he was saying.

DR Z had seen the sadness of this scenario played out many times. It was while participating in Cleft Lip and Palate Clinics at the University of Oklahoma while still a medical student that he first felt gripped by the sadness surrounding these children’s lives. It was what he saw and experienced in those Clinics that most influenced his decision to become a plastic surgeon.

He had seen many boys and girls sit in a chair in a clinic being examined and evaluated to try to come up with ways to help improve their deformities and make the quality of their lives better. He had seen them feel ugly and rejected. He had heard too many of their cries of fear and aloneness.

Much had transpired in the years preceding those moments that the hands of this little boy touch him. So much filled his mind and flooded his soul.

In those moments he felt honored to be given such tribute by what just a short time ago had been a frightened little boy with not much hope for expressing himself clearly or having a normal life.

In some enigmatic panorama, all of what had brought DR Z to these moments seemed to pass through his mind and before his eyes. He was humbled. He was grateful to this little boy and all who had passed before in helping this plastic surgeon become a part of making their lives better.

The journey had made him weary and sad so many times, but this was the raison d’etre for making it.

He had spent hundreds of hours mostly in the middle of the night doing anatomy dissections in the laboratory on the base of the brain, palate, and throat of cadaver heads to identify the nerve supply to the back of the throat. He was searching for the elusive specific nerve supply location that up to that point in history had evaded all who had tried to define it. He believed if he found the nerve supply where he envisioned it to be and it was in fact in the right place to do so he could design a surgical procedure that would make it possible to stop this loss of air into the nose. (In medical terms this is known as velopharyngeal incompetence. This is a common finding in children born with cleft palate defects.)

After exhausting hours of meticulous dissections and going without sleep too many hours to count, he found those nerves. What he found was that these were what are called recurrent nerves meaning nerves that drop down and come back up to what it is they are supplying. This probably explained why those who had searched before had failed. They, as he initially had done, were undoubtedly looking for a direct nerve supply as is the course of most nerves.

DR Z traced the nerves he had identified to and from their cranial nerve origin. He then proceeded to make what he had dreamed was possible a reality.

He designed a dynamically innervated, inverted V shaped flap based from the back of the throat from the right and left with its intact nerve supply from each side coming up into the bases of the inverted V flap on both sides. This dynamically innervated flap could then be attached to the soft palate in front of it to help close the space that was allowing the loss of air.

The flap DR Z had created blocked enough of the loss of air through the nose to change a life of a little boy forever. Finally a child could say, “mommy” or “daddy” or “I love you”, and a thousand other words without being laughed at or made fun of.

The surgical procedure DR Z created had made it possible for little boys and girls to say clearly many words they had not known they could say. It made it possible for this little boy to say thank you as only a child can simply say, “I love you, DR Z”.

In those moments with that little boy’s arms around his neck and tears in his eyes, DR Z knew this had all been made possible because that farm boy from Oklahoma had had a dream. Now as a plastic surgery resident, he had tenaciously pursued defining the nerve supply to the pharyngeal muscles for the first time in history. This discovery had then made it possible for him to create a way to repair a defect in the back of the throat that would prevent the air from escaping through the nose when a little boy such as this was trying to speak.

He knew in those moments that this had become possible because true to the heritage instilled in him he had been creative and persistent enough to search and find an answer where there had been no good answers before.

In those moments, he knew this was possible because of that Mom and Dad who had taught him to pursue what he believed to be possible.

And he knew this was possible because he believed God was with him and this little boy, and that with God, all things are possible.

And to that precious little boy, as he handed him back to his Mom and Dad, DR Z said in a whisper through the tears in his eyes, “Thank you. I love you, too”.

DR Z knew who the hero was here!

_____________________

To read more about DR Z go to www.carrollzahorsky.net
You can also see more about DR Z at www.drzbetterliving.com
and www.re-surgence.net