Hi everyone and welcome back. I am super excited to have a guest with me today who’s doing incredible, incredible work in the field of endometriosis, Dr. Lora Liu, welcome.

Dr. Lora Liu (00:20)

Hi, nice to meet you here. Thank you so much for having me today.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (00:24)

my gosh, well thank you for taking time out your really busy schedule to do that because I know, endosurgeons, there’s not enough, okay, first, if there’s not enough of you in the United States and other places and to just snag you for a quick interview is amazing. And while I’ve been thinking about this, you guys, before I introduce you and read the bio that I put together, because she’s doing some amazing things, I think…

I finally figured, was like, I have such a cool name and it occurred to me why I was thinking that because Dr. Lora Liu, you sound like a, it sounds like a superhero. Superhero. And then I’m thinking.

Dr. Lora Liu (01:06)

You know, everyone

calls me Lucy Lou and I’m like, you know what, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. I’m fine being called Lucy Lou.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (01:10)

Lucy Lou.

And then, you know, but it’s not far off. You’re a surgeon and a mom and all of these other amazing things. I’m like, it fits. She’s a superhero. I’m going with that. Okay, so short bio, you guys. We’ll put the full bio in our blog version of this post, which will have the entire transcript in it. So if there are links and things that you note in the podcast, they will be in the show notes there. All right.

Dr. Lora Liu (01:38)

you

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (01:40)

Dr. Lora Liu discovered her passion for laparoscopic surgery early, inspired by her father, which is a really unique story, Dr. CY Liu, a pioneer in gynecologic surgery. Her interest in medicine solidified during college, where she double majored in biophysics and two hands in the air music before pursuing a medical degree at Loma Linda University, which I think is incredible. Dr. Liu completed a year in family and preventive medicine.

Dr. Lora Liu (01:40)

You

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (02:10)

residency at Loma Linda but missed the hands-on work of surgery. So then she completed her OB-GYN residency at Northwell Health Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and a fellowship in MIGS or minimally invasive gynecologic surgery at Mayo under renowned experts. Specializing in chronic pelvic pain and endometriosis, Dr. Liu collaborates with multidisciplinary teams to address the complex nature of the condition.

She also emphasizes holistic post-surgical care to fist pumps, partnering with physiatrists, pain specialists, pelvic floor physical therapists to support her patient’s recovery and quality of life. Welcome again.

Dr. Lora Liu (02:52)

Thank you so much.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (02:55)

So my first question

is, a fellow musician is, my gosh, tell me about this musical background that absolutely, I think I’m a little biased, but I think it must just make you an even better surgeon and a better human being actually, but tell me a little bit about it.

Dr. Lora Liu (03:19)

Yeah, so you know my mom started me with formal violin lessons when I was three and a half and I I don’t

She tells me that I wanted to play the violin. I don’t know if that’s true because I just don’t remember, but I feel like I have always grown up with a violin in my hand. My older brother, who’s five and a half years older than me, is also a violinist and he actually went into music and violin as a career. So I think it would… Maybe she’s telling the truth. I probably just wanted to do whatever my brother did. So I… Like I said, I feel like I was born with a violin in my hand.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (03:49)

yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (03:57)

And I continued that throughout college and where I decided, let me, you know, if I don’t major in music, then I’m never going to practice. That was kind of my rationale. It’s like, it’s going to force me to practice. And, and so I did, I did major in music and also did the pre-med route. I also double majored, as you mentioned, in biophysics, but music has been just a huge part of my life to the point where I was

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (04:08)

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (04:27)

considering not going to medicine at all and just doing music full-time as a profession.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (04:34)

Wow, that’s incredible. Now I wanna hear you play some time.

Dr. Lora Liu (04:38)

No,

not now. It’s gonna sound like a, well, I mean, you’re a string player, so you know, if you take like one day, two days off, it’s really not good. And I’ve taken decades off, so it would be brutal. Yeah, no one wants to hear that.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (04:43)

Don’t wake up.

Yeah.

It must be,

that’s the kind of thing that is, well, there are a lot of things I’m sure about practicing medicine that keep you humble, but also putting your instrument down, any instrument, and picking you back up again will keep you humble. Yeah, my gosh. Well, shifting gears a little bit, I love your Instagram post. I don’t really know how you have time to do that, to plus do all the other things that you do.

Dr. Lora Liu (05:06)

that’s for sure. That is for sure.

You

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (05:22)

But one of the posts that I love the most was the one that you had about top questions to ask your surgeons before surgery. So I was wondering if you could give the listeners just a, you know, kind of a blow-by-blow of what was in that post.

Dr. Lora Liu (05:37)

Yeah, I mean, how long do we have? Because I could sit here for hours to discuss everything that you should grill your surgeon about before you have surgery, particularly when it comes to endometriosis. But I think some of the top questions is, is your surgeon a busy OBGYN? Meaning, he or she still practice obstetrics, delivering babies? Because I think that says,

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (05:39)

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (06:00)

Listen, it doesn’t it doesn’t say a lot but I think it kind of gives you an idea of how their time is split because if you want to if you’re have surgery you want to do it with someone at least I would want to do it with someone who just does that all day every day over and over and over again because that means that your high volume your complication risks are going to be or your rate of complications are going to be less as Well as you’re not going to be pulled in so many different directions as you are with obstetrics. I mean do

delivering babies is it’s stressful. It takes a long time. They like to come at 3 a.m. in the morning. just you’re always kind of on and it’s extremely stressful. So I think that’s probably one of the biggest questions. One of the top questions that I think I if if my family member was going to have surgery with for something very specialized, I would just be like, what else do you do with your time or what else do do? Not with your time, but in terms of of working.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (06:53)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (06:57)

How’s your time split between surgery and everything else? So that’s probably one of the biggest things. The second one is kind of along the same lines. You do medical management of GYN, medical GYN. Are you doing breast exams, pap smears, menopausal treatment? All which are completely fine. But again, like I said, it kind of gives you an idea of how their focus is split or just kind of where they’re choosing to spend a lot of their time.

whether it’s in the office or in the OR. I don’t know, I have a ton of other things as well, multidisciplinary team, because we know that endometriosis can grow basically anywhere in the abdominal pelvic cavity. And it’s really important, I think, for your surgeon to be able to handle whatever they find.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (07:41)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (07:54)

when they’re doing your surgery. And doesn’t mean that they specifically have to do everything, but they are prepared with either special, and it’s fine if they can do everything, that’s completely fine. But it’s also important, I feel like, to have specialists who can also step in and take over. So if someone needs a bowel resection, is your surgeon gonna be like, you know, you had endometriosis in the bowel, I didn’t feel comfortable touching it, and so.

you’re gonna need another surgery, which is completely okay if your surgeon doesn’t feel comfortable doing something during surgery, then you certainly don’t want them to do that. But I think it’s always good to kind of be prepared and possibly have the general surgeon that they work with available to do that as well. That way you have one complete surgery, close that chapter of your life and get on with living so you don’t have to keep on coming back for more and more.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (08:48)

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think one of the things that you said really resonates with me because I have heard patients come back and tell me this many times, which is why as soon as they get to my office, I’m referring them out to one of you guys for actual skilled excision because they’ll come in and say that they had surgery with someone, usually GYN, and the GYN went in, saw that they’re

was endo in places they didn’t know how to reach, weren’t comfortable reaching. But the difference is they didn’t then close them up and refer them somewhere else. They just said, we got what we could and then sent them on their way as if that was enough, right?

Dr. Lora Liu (09:38)

Yeah.

Or better yet, say, we got what we could, but let’s put you on some Lupron to take care of the rest of it. And that, feel, is even worse. Because now you’re giving, now you’re just giving false information. I mean, because it’s not gonna go away with Lupron. It didn’t go away, you know, before surgery with all this other medical hormonal suppression, so.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (09:45)

Right. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, you just hit the nail on the head. I mean, that’s unfortunately most of the stories that I hear in my particular practice because we currently don’t have anyone in our state. So you’ve got to go out of state to do that. So yeah, so I get a lot of those stories. One of the other things that I love, you have such a public health driven background because you went into family and preventive medicine. How does that influence your work today?

Dr. Lora Liu (10:10)

Yeah.

Yeah, so I did a year after I graduated from medical school, I did a year of family medicine and preventative medicine. But as you mentioned, I missed the hands-on. I wanted to, I love surgery. I missed the hands-on stuff. And also I just think I wasn’t smart enough to know everything about everything, which family medicine docs need to know. But it did give me a really good baseline in terms of looking at the whole person.

It’s not just, let me just focus on my, I think a lot of times with medicine, and this is a good thing and a bad thing, but everything is so subspecialized now. And we’re just trained, and I’m very subspecialized. I tell my patients, look, I’m a one-trick pony.

I just know how to do an endometriosis surgery and everything else. I’m gonna have to refer you out because I’m not smart enough to know about everything. frankly, I’d be doing a disservice if I tried to do everything. But I still try to look at the patient as a whole person and not just treat the disease, but also treat the person and understand that my role in this patient’s journey.

is it could be a very small role or it could be a very big role. And if it happens to be a very small role, who can I set my patient up with to make that patient whole again? It’s very easy to cut out disease. It’s not so easy to undo decades of medical trauma, of physical trauma from just being in pain every single day for decades. A surgery doesn’t fix that.

And I am very confident I can get out the disease, but am I able to really restore the whole person to well-being? A lot of times I can’t. So I think that’s what family medicine has taught me is to look at the whole person. It’s a person, it’s not just a disease.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (12:26)

Yeah.

Yeah, and that underscores the importance too. Maybe you’re listening to this podcast for the first time and this is the first episode that you have dropped into. I think one of the biggest take homes is that endometriosis feels like a full systems threat. It’s like a full systems, you know, body systems disease. And there are too many practitioners and people. I think we have a health literacy problem still.

Dr. Lora Liu (12:50)

Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (12:58)

not just in general population and people, but also in the healthcare world where they don’t understand what a body impact endometriosis has. And that is one thing that’s so important because to your point, from my end, what I see is someone comes in and all the tissue that I’m gonna work with from a pelvic health perspective didn’t get the memo that things…

Dr. Lora Liu (13:09)

Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (13:26)

were fixed and cleaned up, you know? So maybe you had snarky psoas, like hip flexors, a respiratory diaphragm that was impaired, because it can be in the respiratory diaphragm. And then from the respiratory diaphragm, that impacts, you know, intrinsics of the vocal cords and how people speak, since those are connected. I see all of those and they present all of those things, those tissue issues, if you will. And it’s almost like one big trauma posture.

Dr. Lora Liu (13:26)

Yeah. Right.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (13:54)

Like if you think about how someone is curled up in a ball when they’re really upset or they’re crying or they’re in pain all the time. It’s just like we have to unwind all of that trauma posturing that happened. And usually it is over decades. It’s not just unfortunately because of diagnosis, delays in diagnosis. It’s been a good long time since they weren’t gaslit, right? When they see you, hopefully that’s the beginning of the end of their gaslighting regarding.

Dr. Lora Liu (13:54)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (14:23)

endometriosis, but then we have to convince all the tissues that that’s happened too.

Dr. Lora Liu (14:29)

Yeah, I love that. The tissues didn’t get the memo that endometriosis is no longer there. They didn’t get the memo. So I love that actually.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (14:33)

No.

Yeah, they present with all kinds of things like deep hip pain, deep pelvic pain obviously, that would be a go-to, but also hip pain. Someone may have told them, yeah, yeah, it looks like you have a hip labral tear. You could be a candidate for hip arthroscopy. And they come in and it isn’t that actually, it’s just that none of the deep hip rotators or the gluteals, nothing is working anymore. Everything’s too busy, you know, curled up in a ball.

Dr. Lora Liu (14:43)

yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (15:06)

and it’s all hip flexors and know what we call posterior chain. And once you get those things, I call it pressing the reset button. Once we can press the reset button and the tissues are like, wow, this is a brand new day. This is how we are to act. Then it can help people avoid misdiagnosis in other ways too. So yeah, that holistic approach is just so incredible. think that another takeaway too is that

Dr. Lora Liu (15:14)

Okay.

Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (15:34)

to speak to the expertise of what you do, I think a lot of people will go in and surgery, excision surgery, skilled excision surgery is the gold standard, right? It’s the gold standard. But I think that people may underestimate the healing time and the recovery that it takes so that six weeks later they’re like, well, I don’t feel any different. Well, hold up. The surgery was a success.

Dr. Lora Liu (15:54)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (16:04)

Right? Is a lot of education and I think this is a great platform to then, you know, kind of walk them through a little bit of that process of how long, you know, when you see your patients and then you’re following up, how do you follow up with them and what are some of the things that you hear that will make people feel better about, okay, I don’t need to panic if at six weeks I am not feeling, you know, as I should because it could take that long to get in with their pelvic PT to start PT anyway.

Dr. Lora Liu (16:34)

Yeah, no, six weeks is just this arbitrary number that I think we’ve just been taught in medical school. It’s, okay, post-op recovery, six weeks and you’re good to go. I mean, same thing with delivering a baby too. Six weeks and you’re good. And you’re like, no, I’m not good. I’m completely destroyed at six weeks. can barely, you know, it’s the same thing. Like six weeks, there’s no magic. Nothing magical happens at six weeks.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (16:54)

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (17:00)

And for some patients, yes, they are completely fine at six weeks and good for them. I will say that they’re the minority. That is not generally what I see. I will say, look, after like four weeks, can start lifting things heavier than 10 pounds, blah, blah. Your incisions are gonna be completely healed by that time. And so, yeah, you may look fine.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (17:04)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (17:24)

and you may still be, and you may be able to lift things that are heavy. can still go, you know, you can go back to work, but you are still healing. And sometimes it can take in a lot of feedback that I get from my patients. And again, my patients have been my best teachers because when I first started, I was saying, yeah, six weeks, you’re good. Six weeks, no problem. Six weeks, post-op check, come in, thumbs up, have a nice life. And a lot of times patients are feeling better at six weeks, but

the recovery can last three months, six months. Some patients said, look, I didn’t really even feel great or really begin to feel quote unquote normal until like nine months. And you know, a lot of it depends on the individual patient. I mean, so much depends on that as well, but also their care team. So I know we were initially taught or I was initially taught.

don’t do PT for six weeks after surgery. And I’m like, I tell my patients, look, once you feel like you’re up to it, go see the PT. I’ve had patients go, I told a patient last week, she emailed me at like four in the morning, it was two or three days post-op. I said, please go reach out to your PT. And she got in with her PT three days post-op and said, that was the best thing ever. She’s like, I feel amazing.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (18:33)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (18:50)

And so I think, again, it depends on the PT as well. Not all PT’s are created equal, not all surgeons are created equal, not everyone’s an individual, but I tell my patients, look, go back to PT as soon as you feel up to it. There’s no restriction, especially if you’ve had, now, if they’ve never been to PT before, I tell them maybe wait a couple of weeks just because you may not, it may not be the best to do an initial eval.

so early after surgery, but if they’ve had a relationship with a beauty, I’m like, please go, like as soon as you want.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (19:23)

Yeah,

I think you brought up two really important points. And when I am seeing a patient, always want to, usually I’m referring them out to begin with because they haven’t had excision surgery, they had ablation or they need to see you. That affords me the ability to, and it impresses, it brings up the importance too of seeing a pelvic PT would be ideal at least once or twice before you go in.

Dr. Lora Liu (19:52)

Before.

Yep.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (19:53)

Because then you can prepare them for what comes after. And also it tamps down a lot of the fear too. If they have that two or three day post-op, they’re like, my gosh, I’m in particular types of pain. I think it’s the pelvic PT’s job to go, these are the types of pain. Here’s the differentiate. Here’s how you differentiate between the types of pain. It could be gas pain. It could be constipation pain. It could be incisional pain. And here’s what you do for each of those things.

Dr. Lora Liu (19:56)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (20:23)

that actually cuts down on probably the number of calls your office is gonna get to worrying about different types of pain. And then they’re less fearful too. And because if they’re fearful, there goes the trauma posturing and there goes all the muscle, the tissue issues, the pelvic floor begins to tighten and that does not feel good post-op. So that’s I think one thread I wanted to pull out of what you said because there’s just a lot of pre and post-op stuff that can be.

Dr. Lora Liu (20:28)

Yeah.

you

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (20:51)

just everybody wants to feel like

they’re attended to and that their pain is believed and heard. And if they can understand ahead of time the half a dozen different types of pain and what to do about it, they feel pretty empowered to, you know, going into it. And that brings up another one more point you said, which is the support system. I would love to hear.

Dr. Lora Liu (21:07)

Yeah. Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (21:19)

what you might say to patients and their caregivers. Maybe it’s speaking more to the caregivers than the people with endometriosis right now. But because the incisions are so small, it’s not this big open surgery anymore. I think that a lot of family and well-meaning caregivers think that they’re just gonna be up and going in two weeks or even the magic six week, the non-magical six week mark. And that can create a lot of like self-gaslighting.

Dr. Lora Liu (21:30)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (21:48)

where a patient feels like, I should be, because they have this fill in the blank, doing fill in the blank, because my family feels like, well, what are you laying around for? You just have these tiny little incisions. Anyway, what would you say to those caregivers and patients to really prepare them for that?

Dr. Lora Liu (21:51)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, your point, unfortunately, we’re able to do these big surgeries through little tiny incisions, which is amazing because a few years ago, I mean, not even a few years ago, patients are still getting big incisions to take out their uterus, right? And I anyway, but a lot of surgery happens on the inside through those little tiny incisions and just but you just don’t have the.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (22:22)

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (22:34)

battle scars, I guess, to show for it. And those incisions are eight millimeters. They’re eight millimeters. They’re extremely tiny. They heal very quickly. And because it is done minimally, invasively, the majority of my patients do go home the same day. I’m like, you have to get up and walk. Walking is the best thing. Upright, moving around. But I always say, look, you’re going to be extremely tired because a lot of surgery happened on the inside. And the way that the body…

recovers is by forcing you to rest. you have to take naps. You are going to be extremely tired. You’re to be fatigued for months after surgery. It’s not just a couple of weeks. It’s months. You’re going to have fatigue. Even if you feel good and your pain is pretty much gone, you’re still going to be so tired. You’re going to go to the grocery store. You’re going to have to take a nap when you come.

Dr. Lora Liu (23:19)

so you’re gonna feel fatigued for weeks, months after surgery, even if your pain is pretty much gone. The surgical pain is gonna be gone, but the fatigue lingers. And I think it’s important for not just the patient to realize that, because I think a lot of times, like you said, endometriosis patients are so good at gaslighting themselves and being like, well, I should be feeling this way. I shouldn’t be in pain. Everything’s negative.

And it still continues after the surgery. should be feeling, I should be up like running a marathon. I should be up like taking my kids to school. I should be doing PTA. I should be back at work. should, because my incisions look fine. They’re healed. I barely have any scars, but that’s just not the case. know, so much surgery happens through these little tiny incisions. I mean, basically every single organ in the abdominal pelvic cavity can be operated at.

you know, during the course of a four five hour surgery. And that takes time. That takes time to heal. It’s not, it’s something that I try to reiterate with my patients, because I hear a lot of shoulding from patients. I should do, I should feel this way. I should be doing this. I should be back at work. I should be, you know, taking care of my family. I’m like, you gotta take care of yourself. You gotta take care of yourself before you can…

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (24:26)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (24:39)

take care of anyone else and you had a big surgery and you have to recover. And if you don’t recover your body will force you to recover and rest.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (24:44)

Yeah.

That’s true, that’s true. Yeah, there’s a quote, if you don’t make time for wellness, and you can insert any wellness, fitness, self-care, then your body’s definitely gonna take time for illness. Yeah. Well, I mean, along those lines, I mean, with your dad being at the forefront of gynecological surgery,

Dr. Lora Liu (25:01)

Yes, yes, it will force you to.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (25:14)

and you must have some stories and a lot of influence for you to end up where you are. Just take us down that memory line a little bit.

Dr. Lora Liu (25:25)

Yeah, so my dad was a GYN surgeon. He was one of the pioneers of GYN laparoscopy in the United States back in the late 80s, early 90s. Him and Harry Rich were, think, one of the first in the country. So I just remember at a very early age, and I actually saw my dad this weekend and we were talking about it. He’s like, you weren’t that young. I’m like, dad, I…

I was very young when I would come to the hospital with you. He’s like, really? I don’t remember. I’m like, well, you’re old and your memory is no good anymore. I remember. So I remember going with my dad to make rounds. And then once I was old enough to go into the OR, which I don’t know if there was really any criteria, but I guess as long as he knew I wasn’t going to contaminate the sterile field, he took me into the OR. And at that point, he was doing laparoscopy so I could just watch it on the big screen. I could just watch TV basically. And I just thought it was so cool. I loved it.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (25:55)

You

Dr. Lora Liu (26:19)

I loved it. My older brother, like I mentioned, is a musician. My dad tried to take him to the O.R. My brother hated it. So it’s just, yeah, two different personalities, two different callings. And I just love surgery. I just loved what my dad was doing. I would like peek over his shoulder and be like, what are you doing? And he would…

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (26:28)

Bye.

Dr. Lora Liu (26:46)

tell me things and I don’t remember what he would say but I just found it fascinating. Very, very cool.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (26:50)

Yeah,

that’s an amazing influence and story. when did he, how long has he been retired now?

Dr. Lora Liu (27:00)

A very long time, feel like maybe 10 plus, probably about 15 years. Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (27:06)

Yeah.

Wow. That must have been a hard transition just for him, you know, I think.

Dr. Lora Liu (27:13)

It was,

he always tells me that he, he’s like, Lori, I retired too early. He was like, I, and he said after he retired, he would still dream about surgery, but he’s also the type, well, first of all, my mom said, because my dad was traveling a lot and my dad, my mom said, gave him an ultimatum and said, either you stop traveling or you retire from surgery. And my dad loved to travel and like he would lecture and stuff like that. So he decided to just give up his practice.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (27:23)

Wow.

Dr. Lora Liu (27:42)

But yes, I think it was a very difficult transition for him.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (27:46)

Yeah, yeah, it must be being such a big part of what he identified with, you know, and loved. Yeah. So I guess we really answered this question already, but there’s always like lingering thoughts, you know, after you do an interview and afterwards you’re like, darn it, I should have said this. So I wanted to revisit back one more time about what you want people to know about finding the best care for

Dr. Lora Liu (27:51)

Yeah. Yeah.

you

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (28:15)

excision surgery. Like what are the green flags? And you might decide to talk about yellow or red flags too, but what are some of the green flags with finding a good surgeon?

Dr. Lora Liu (28:28)

Green flags. Well, I mean, there’s some, you know, like we mentioned, some questions to ask your surgeon, but I think one of the biggest things is do you do excision or ablation? I think that’s a huge question to ask. That’s definitely a green flag if they do excision, ablation. I just, think if you, if your surgeon is doing ablation, maybe get a second opinion with the surgeon that does excision because that really is the gold standard for endometriosis.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (28:40)

huge.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (28:57)

treatment and also for the surgical procedure. The other thing too that I tell my patients, because a lot of my patients, speaking of second opinion, I tell my patients to second opinion. A lot of times I’m a third, fourth opinion for patients. And a lot of times they’ve seen really, really good surgeons, excision surgeons, and they rattle off these names. I’m like, oh yeah, these guys are good.

these guys, gals, whatever, these doctors, these surgeons are good, you would be in very good hands no matter which surgeon you went to.

At the end of the day though, I think a big…

a big part of how to choose a surgeon after they’ve hit all the criteria. You you have your pros and your cons list. They check all the boxes. At the end of the day, you have to choose your surgeon on who you feel the most comfortable with because you as a patient, you’re asleep. You have no control of what’s going on, which is terrifying, terrifying. And so you have to have surgery by a surgeon who you feel is going to…

take the best care of you and also who you feel the most comfortable with. And if all things are being equal, I feel like you should trust your gut. And it doesn’t matter how many papers they’ve published, how many awards they’ve gotten, if you don’t feel comfortable with the surgeon, even though they check all the boxes, it may not be the right fit. I don’t know, that’s what I tell my patients. I’m like, look, you’d be in the best of hands with all these.

five surgeons that you’ve seen, they’re amazing. I know them personally, I know their work. And at the end of the day, and patients will say, well, how do I choose? I said, you you have to choose based on who you feel the most comfortable with, who you feel like is going to be your advocate when you’re asleep and do the best thing, do the next best thing for you, do the right thing, do the best that they can do. And I think that’s, I think a lot of it, you have to trust your gut, which sounds…

kind of silly when you’re choosing a surgeon, at the end of day, I think you really do have to trust your gut after you check off certain criteria, right?

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (31:05)

Yeah, yeah,

yeah, yeah, definitely. Because yeah, there are a lot of incredible surgeons sprinkled throughout the US. We can’t say there’s a lot, a lot, a lot, but there are incredible excision surgeons across the US that would do a great job. So if we think about and feel the experience of the…

the profile, the life kind of journey, the walk that a patient with endometriosis has had, they have experienced, they’ve experienced a lot of crap, a lot of medical gaslighting. I can’t remember the psychologist who coined the phrase institutional betrayal, but it seems a very appropriate term to use because we go into healthcare thinking,

Dr. Lora Liu (31:48)

Mm.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (31:55)

well, these are the experts, no matter who you see, healthcare and healthcare, they’re all experts, right? They train for this, but then they get betrayed inside that system when someone says, oh, it’s just period pain or, you know, we’re not gonna do anything unless you want to have kids and then we’ll listen to you because it’s about fertility or something like that. So at the end of the day, you know, since this disease really is a disease, although,

Dr. Lora Liu (32:00)

All right.

Yeah. Sure.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (32:21)

Males could get that, it’s incredibly rare. It’s mostly disease that females are going to have. Safe to say there’s been a lot of medical misogyny and the gaslighting that they’ve experienced. Because you’re female, because of your personal experience and just being female means we’re already gonna have to work harder.

sometimes in uncomfortable clothes and heels and stuff, to get to where, you know, the same place to where men would get. So do you feel like that you’ve experienced, or your patients, you know, just as stories of solidarity that your patients, or you have experienced in your, you know, pursuit of becoming a surgeon of where you are today, how have you handled those things along the way, and what advice do you have to give?

Dr. Lora Liu (32:54)

You

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (33:20)

to your patients when they have experienced something like medical misogyny.

Dr. Lora Liu (33:27)

guess the only advice I would have is be unapologetic, be annoying, you know?

don’t take no for an answer if you feel like it’s, sometimes yeah, you have to take no for an answer, but there’s always a second opinion. And I don’t recommend, I’m not saying you should just keep on going from doctor and doctor, doctor, doctor, doctor shopping and all that, but if something doesn’t sit right with you, you may have gotten the wrong answer from an expert. You could have gotten the right answer from an expert, and it may not even be an expert that you.

or talking to. I think in this day and age, there’s a lot of, I mean, I don’t necessarily recommend that you’re like Googling and everything like that, but there’s a lot of information that patients have access to that they didn’t have five, 10 years ago about endometriosis. And again, you were talking about support systems, I think,

There’s tons of support groups now for patients specifically with endometriosis. Online, in-person, Reddit, I guess, is a huge thing. Social media is a huge source of information. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, but at the same time…

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (34:49)

Yeah, of the rare, true, yeah. But one of the,

one of the rare positives of social media, right, is the support groups that are out there, which is true, yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (34:59)

Yeah.

Yeah. So I don’t want to say be annoying, but like be unapologetic. That’s a better word. Be unapologetic and don’t be bullied into just not asking questions. If something doesn’t make sense, ask questions. And this is your body. This is your life. This is your

This is your life. So no one’s gonna take better care of you than you are. you have to, I mean, think about how you would take care of a loved one. I mean, you would, I have children and I would do anything for them. And if someone slammed the door on my face with one of my kids, I just go down, you know, down to the next door and hopefully it’s open and just keep on knocking on doors. We don’t give ourselves.

the same compassion and care that we give our loved ones. And so that’s why I’m just like, be apologetic. Just keep on asking questions. Don’t take no for an answer and educate yourself.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (36:06)

Yeah, it’s so true about what you said. I wanna revisit that for just a second about how we don’t advocate for ourselves as strongly as we would as say if it was, I have three kids, if it was one of my kids and trying to get a diagnosis for them, because goodness knows, my kids are all teenaged in years now, they’re all teenagers, which is a whole other, that’s a whole other podcast.

self-adjoint mother teenagers. But that’s, know, over 20 years times three of advocacy. And if I think about, did I advocate for myself with the same fierceness that I advocated for them when they had special needs? I don’t think I did, you know, because the pain that women go through with menstrual cycles and because…

Dr. Lora Liu (36:36)

You

Probably not. Probably not.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (37:02)

no one really talks about it. And previously, our mothers and especially our grandmothers never talked about anything, nor was there any care for it really. Meant that we just normalized pretty much everything that had to do with female anatomy and physiology, which is sad. So I want everybody to take Dr. Liu’s advice to heart. Yeah, be assertive, be annoying, and don’t back down.

Dr. Lora Liu (37:11)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (37:31)

Trust yourself. Yeah, trust yourself.

Dr. Lora Liu (37:32)

Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (37:35)

So has it been hard?

I don’t know how to phrase it, succeeding as, because we don’t, the reason it’s hard for me to phrase it is because I feel like in a lot of interviews, women get asked questions that men don’t, right? And now it can be frivolous, like someone asking Michelle Obama what she’s wearing, and she’s like, who cares what I’m wearing? It’s just the work I’m doing, right? So there’s that frivolity of kind of, I guess, misogyny and marginalization that women get.

Dr. Lora Liu (37:52)

you

Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (38:09)

But I think the question that I always wanna ask women who succeed at such like doing incredible things like you’re doing is because we wanna see women doing what we would aspire to. And two generations ago, that was really hard to find. A generation ago, still really hard to find. It’s less difficult to find today, but it doesn’t mean that you didn’t have unique circumstances that still…

felt like more of a struggle, like, you know, boys expecting to achieve and they would be the ones to go to med school 100 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, whatever, instead of you going to med school, right? So has there been, what have you felt, what’s been the hardest part about succeeding as a woman in your field? And just to, for all the listeners, I wanna say we don’t have to ask men this because the path is already well-paved.

Dr. Lora Liu (38:52)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (39:08)

to facilitate

their success. So we still have to talk about it because it is hard.

Dr. Lora Liu (39:14)

Yeah. And to your point, I mean, I don’t think really men are asked in interviews about their work-family balance. How do you balance family and work? No, there’s no questions like that. Women, we get asked that all the time. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, my wife takes care of it. I know. tell my husband all the time, who’s a PT, by the way, I tell him I need a wife. I need a wife. Can you find me a wife?

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (39:21)

Never. Yeah. Because they don’t have to. Right, they’ve got a wife. I don’t have a wife. Maybe I should get one.

my gosh. Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (39:43)

No,

there are so many more challenges I think that women face when they have a career as well as family as well as think just life in general. think we have to, there’s so many more hurdles for us to cross in order to get to the same finish line as men. I’m not saying that men have it easy, they have their own challenges obviously, but particularly

Women, I think in the workforce, there’s many, I think everyone can agree that there’s many more hurdles that we have to jump through and hoops that we have to jump through in order to get to the same place as men.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (40:18)

Yeah.

Yeah, I think one of your stories that you were telling me, maybe you can share a little bit about this with the listener before we press record was when you were nursing and trying to, like you’re working right up until and then you’re right back in the OR.

Dr. Lora Liu (40:35)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, no, I so I

have two children. I worked all the way up. I I delivered my second baby on a Tuesday. I operated on a Monday. And then the next day I went in for my for my scheduled C-section, which was the second one. And then I breastfed, I nursed both of my children and I went back to work four weeks after my C-section for the first one and then five weeks.

after my second one, I went back to work and so I was nursing and I was pumping and in the OR. It actually wasn’t, thank you to all of the women who paved this road for us working mothers because I just, when you say unapologetic, when I tell patients to be unapologetic, I was completely unapologetic. would pump while I was operating.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (41:16)

my gosh.

with.

Dr. Lora Liu (41:38)

I I told you before, think everyone in the OR has seen my boobs, men, female, I didn’t care. I was like, if you don’t wanna see my boobs then turn around, I gotta connect myself to the pumps and I’m gonna keep on operating. The nurses would run my breast milk back to the fridge, everyone is very accommodating, but I didn’t.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (41:43)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (41:56)

I didn’t give anyone a choice to not accommodate me. I was just like, this is what I’m doing. I’m unapologetic about it. If you don’t like it, then complain. But you know, I’m sorry, I’m not gonna change this. But I was very fortunate. I’m very fortunate because I’m surrounded by a great team. I’m surrounded by great…

mentors who are male who support me and you know as well as females as well and like I said thank you to all of the working mothers 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years ago who didn’t have the luxury that I had to just kind of hey I’m pumping and I’m gonna you know two minute break while I like hook myself up to the pumps and I’m gonna continue operating.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (42:42)

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (42:47)

And I think even to this day that not a lot of surgeons have or lot of trainees residents surgeons students They don’t have that luxury that I do now that I’m attending surgeon and it’s quote-unquote my OR I don’t know if I was in training or if I was a student if I’d be able to do that So I think we still have a long ways to go. But again be unapologetic. This is what’s happening This is the best this is this is what’s best for my family and for myself and I got to feed my baby and I’m

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (42:59)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (43:16)

Get over it. If you don’t wanna see it, then turn around. Don’t look.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (43:20)

It gives new meaning to the, or it kind of underscores the phrase of, you know, it takes a village with the nurses running the milk back and forth and yeah, to the fridge and stuff. Because it does take a lot of people. And I…

Dr. Lora Liu (43:27)

It does.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (43:35)

It just so resonates with me when you’re talking about the support systems that you need because yeah, as women in healthcare and in medicine and various areas of caregiving people, it takes so many people to help that, to bring that together, whether it’s one kid or three kids or whatever you have, but you can’t do it.

alone, that’s for sure.

Dr. Lora Liu (44:06)

No,

definitely not.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (44:09)

And so that means for everyone listening that ability to push back when you experience medical gaslighting, when you experienced snarky comments that sound like misogynistic comments, just belittling or marginalizing the type of pain you have because it might be related to female parts, air quotes for those of you not watching on YouTube.

Dr. Lora Liu (44:37)

you

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (44:38)

And the very experience of endometriosis itself is exhausting for women. It’s very fatiguing. So is there any advice that you have or maybe it’s just even how you approach them when they come in and you’re doing consults to just acknowledge that fatigue that they’ve stood up for themselves enough that they got to your office, right?

they found you, they’re in your office. That alone is a huge win. It’s a big victory. How do you then set the stage for them in terms of, because they may not have the energy to keep pushing back and to keep feeling like they’re on top of it. And then again, can gaslight themselves again because they’re like, should have the energy to keep going and keep leaning in and keep pushing back, that kind of thing. So when they make it to your office and they’ve got that,

kind of universal look of this is exhausting, I’m so tired, what happens? Talk us through, or just walk us through that experience when they come in for consult.

Dr. Lora Liu (45:48)

Yeah, most the time I just try to let the patient talk because I think a lot of times patients are talked at and not just listened to. And honestly, if you just listen to the patient tell their story for the first five, six, seven minutes by the… Sometimes I interrupt them and be like, we’ve been talking for two and a half minutes and you’ve hit every single major symptom of endometriosis. I cannot believe that no one’s ever…

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (45:57)

Yeah. Yes.

Dr. Lora Liu (46:17)

mention this to you and that you’re self-referred that they were just googling their symptoms. Oh, maybe having endometriosis I don’t know. I feel like we’re just, we just don’t listen to the patient. If you listen to the patient, they will tell you what’s going on because as a patient or as just as a person, you know your body better than anyone else, right? You live in your body 24 seven and like you said, you’re

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (46:18)

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (46:46)

but you’re so tired because you’ve been trying to say what’s going on, but you’re completely dismissed time and time and time again. It takes an average of seven to 10 years to get diagnosed with endometriosis. So can you, you know, know something’s wrong, but a decade later, no one believes you still.

So of course you’re exhausted. It’s like, why am I fighting? I keep on running my, I keep on banging my head into a brick wall basically because I’m told the same thing over and over again. And then you start to think, well maybe I’m actually not feeling this. Maybe I’m actually just crazy. But you know, like I said, you know your body better than anyone else. Don’t you dare let a doctor who no matter how fancy their degrees are.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (47:22)

you

Dr. Lora Liu (47:34)

who’s met you for five or 10 minutes tell you that there’s nothing wrong. Sure, you may not have endometriosis, you may not have X, Y, and Z, but I feel like the patient needs to be validated, they need to be believed, and just listen to them. And that’s where I try to just, at the very beginning of a consult, I’m just like, so tell me what’s going on. What brought you here?

and the patients usually just start talking and I’m taking notes and I’m like, this is classic endo. They’ve had three colonoscopies, five cystoscopies, they’re on all these different types of medication for anxiety. Yeah, no shit, you are anxious because you completely, this has been going on since you were 11 when you started your period and now you’re 30 and you’re trying to get pregnant. I could talk about this for days, but.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (48:18)

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (48:30)

I think really validation, listening and just believing that what the patient is feeling is truly what is going on. Now, like I said, I don’t know whether she has a nematria or I don’t know whether the patient has endometriosis or not. There’s no way I don’t have a crystal ball without taking a look inside. But at the very minimum, mean, yeah, I believe that you have left leg pain and it’s difficult for you to walk during your periods. I believe that

you don’t eat all day during your period because it hurts so bad to poop. I 100 % believe you. I believe you that, I mean, the list can go on and on. I believe that. mean, why would the patient make that up? Why would she starve herself all day during her periods just so she doesn’t have to poop for those couple of days? I mean, it’s, I don’t know. I just think it’s…

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (49:13)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (49:28)

I think doctors just don’t listen enough. And also that’s a reflection of how healthcare is today though, because first of all, you’re expected to see like 50 patients a day because you don’t get any reimbursement by the insurance company. You have to document every little single thing. Otherwise you don’t get reimbursed by insurance companies. And at the end of the day, there’s no, I’m sorry, there’s no time to listen to the patient.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (49:36)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (49:54)

because all you need to do is you just have to order ultrasound, blood work, and an MRI. It’s negative, you’re fine, you’re fine. your periods are bad, here’s some birth control pills. you tried birth control, here, try a different type, and contact me in six months. Give it six months, and then come back. You know, that’s another six, no wonder it takes seven to 10 years to get diagnosed, because you’re just completely, you’re just, let’s just kick this can down the field a little bit more. Let’s play hot potato, go see a GI, go see a urologist.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (49:54)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (50:22)

I don’t even remember what their original question was, Dr. Garner but you like, no, but this is like, it’s insane.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (50:30)

You actually just, you just segued beautifully into my last question because we started out talking about just providing that support and reinforcement and validation that patients need when they come in and you know, their proverbial can, you know, that whole medical record, them being just a.

or a diagnosis or a lack of diagnosis to a practitioner or the insurance company just gets kicked down the road a little bit. So we started out talking about that and how that validation is so important. But then it morphed into my last question, which is, it’s a difficult one, but it’s one we have to kind of face head on in the United States, particularly right now, because given our current political climate.

which is just feeding uncertainty and healthcare access for women, how does that, how do you see, none of us can predict anything, right? But how do you see that you will, that things will shift or be impacted or how are you, I guess, providing that reinforcement or support and care for your patients who come in worried about those things since?

In general, it’s going to be increasingly harder to access healthcare and we’re not sure what’s gonna happen with the research budget and when we only got 0.038 % of the NIH budget anyway, what’s gonna happen? There’s probably things that you’re looking to in terms of advancement, like things you can get excited about about endometriosis for the future, maybe less invasive.

diagnostic possibilities, but also what do you see as concerns to tackle for the future?

So it’s kind of a two part thing. One is pro, like what do you see in the future? What would you like to see happen in the future? But then part two is really what, or we can switch them out either way. What are the realistic challenges that we’re facing ahead?

Dr. Lora Liu (52:27)

Yeah.

What would I like to see in the future when it comes to endometriosis? I would like…

I like a lot of things. But I think the biggest… No, I think a big thing because…

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (52:56)

Christmas big Christmas list you

Dr. Lora Liu (53:05)

I think a big thing that I would like is for anyone who

who has certain symptoms to be, and I mean, this is completely just, but I wish there were more, first of all, I wish there were more excision surgeons, right? I wish there were more people who just specialized only in endometriosis and did excision surgery. I wish that was just completely, I wish there was just a million of us in the United States and we’d still be completely busy because there’s so many patients who need it. But I wish that it was more,

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (53:24)

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (53:43)

I wish it was like an ACOG or our governing body as OBGYNs that anyone with certain symptoms, we love flow charts in medicine. We love algorithms. We this, you know, if yes, then here, if no, here. And then we just love that, right? Because it makes things very simple for us. I wish that referral to a specialist was more,

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (53:56)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (54:12)

was more common, especially for OBGYNs, generalists. I don’t get a lot of referrals from OBGYNs, to be honest. I get a lot of referrals from PTs. I would say the most common people who refer to me are pelvic floor physical therapists, which are amazing, as well as gastroenterologists, which is, but when it comes to regular OBGYNs, no, not a lot, which I think is very strange. I really think it’s strange. So I wish there was something like that, that

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (54:30)

Hmm.

Says a lot. Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (54:42)

ACOG will put out an announcement saying, if patient has blah, blah, blah, endometriosis should be at the top of your list when it comes to a differential diagnosis rather than at the very bottom, which it always is. Endometriosis is always the last stop on the train, always. And they’ve gotten a million dollar workup by every single other specialist before anyone’s like, huh, maybe it’s endometriosis or worse yet, no one’s even mentioned that to them. The patients have found it on Instagram.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (54:55)

Thank

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (55:11)

That’s that you know, like it’s anyway, so that that’s one of my biggest things and I think it’s a pretty simple change that could a pretty simple thing that could Change just it could change so many people’s lives it just with that one simple statement Just say consider, you know, and be sure you should be at the very top of the list other things I know they’re working on a lot of

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (55:11)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Dr. Lora Liu (55:34)

diagnostic tests or screening tests, saliva tests, menstrual effluent tests, know, stuff like that to screen for endometriosis. I think that’s great. But also, I think if you just ask certain questions to patients and you screen them that way, a lot of times, you know, a lot of times they’ll answer and a lot of times that points you in the direction of endometriosis.

I think imaging, MRI, endo mapping, ultrasound, think all of that is really coming. I think Europe is way ahead of us when it comes to that. But I think that’s going to become more of a global screening method. then again, there’s not a lot of practitioners who are very good at it. And again, you have to have a specialist do these special types of imaging tests.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (56:31)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Lora Liu (56:32)

So

honestly I just think that it would be good if we could just get endometriosis to the top of differential diagnosis when it comes to pelvic pain, unexplained infertility, as well as painful menstrual cycles, bowel dysfunctions, you know with any of that I think endometriosis should be at the top of the list. And then not just saying you probably had endometriosis, let’s put you on

birth control pills or X, Y, and Z, they should be referred to specialists.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (57:07)

Yeah, absolutely. That’s such a good point because a lot of the times, and I ask this question often, what do you see as the future of an endo? And it’s always related to diagnostics, better diagnostics, easier access, more surgeons. But having an algorithm like that or an inventory would be so helpful, so helpful.

Dr. Lora Liu (57:28)

There you go.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (57:30)

So any other challenges that you see or ways in which we could, I guess, I guess the appropriate term would be to push back against the things that we’re going to see in the near future in terms of research and access to care. Any words of wisdom on that that you could leave us with?

Dr. Lora Liu (57:56)

There’s not a lot that we can do to control our surroundings or what this government’s going to do or what laws are passed. I yeah, we can go out and vote, but at the end of the day, there’s not a lot of control that I have over really anybody else except for me. And so I think

what I always try to do because I’m such a control freak. I want to control my kids. I want to control my husband. I want to control everybody. But I can’t, right? I only have control over me. So when things around me are not going the way that I want, I have to remind myself, first of all, I have no control over the situation. I only have control over how I react. And how I choose to react is…

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (58:25)

you

Dr. Lora Liu (58:49)

Sometimes very inappropriate. You can ask my husband, have a big temper, which doesn’t come out a lot, but if you push me, it comes out. So sometimes I react inappropriately, but I always do try to do the next best thing. And I think that’s all we can do as individuals is do the next best thing. And then also surround yourself with like-minded people because you need support. We all need support. No one’s an island.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (58:53)

But.

Dr. Lora Liu (59:18)

And so I surround myself with like-minded surgeons. I surround myself with supportive family, with supportive friends who kind of under, some of them are surgeons, some of them aren’t. But surround yourself with support and then just try to do the next best thing. Because that’s really the only thing you have control over is you, your actions and your reaction.

but we’re all human sometimes it’s not easy to do the next best thing but I think if we can try to just strive for that and if everyone does that then I think the world actually would be a better place despite our surroundings that can crumble around us but at least we will be okay with ourselves and because really that’s the only person you have to be okay with is yourself.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (1:00:11)

Yeah, let’s sage perennial wisdom, like for everything, right? Not just endometriosis. So if you’re feeling that frustration and fatigue and a bit of that trauma posturing with those tissue issues that we were talking about, know that there is help, there is support, there are…

plenty of healthcare providers across the interdisciplinary spectrum that believe you and want to see you be better. So don’t give up. You are cared for and we care. And to that end, Dr. Liu, can you tell us where to find you?

Dr. Lora Liu (1:00:57)

Yeah, you can find me on Instagram. My handle is at Dr. Liu underscore endometriosis underscore surgeon. I am also on TikTok while it lasts. It’s at Dr. Liu underscore endo underscore surgeon. And then also my website is www.loraliuMD.com.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (1:01:23)

Thank you, thank you so much for giving us that unique perspective, which is so important for, my gosh, for women who are experiencing this. I’ve heard of more than one story of young girls, young women who go through the experience of endometriosis surgery and recovery and are so moved by that that they actually want to go into the medical field as a result.

Dr. Lora Liu (1:01:51)

Yeah.

Ginger Garner PT, DPT (1:01:53)

So that story that you’ve just so generously shared with us is inspiring to someone that’s going to hear it, that may make up another and add another excision surgeon to the list of providers or provider in another way, because there’s just not enough to go around for sure. But thank you again for joining me today and for sharing your story. I really appreciate it.