This is probably hard to believe, but at age 5 or 6, I told my family that I wanted to be a surgeon.

I didn’t grow up in a physician family. My mom had me when she was young, and went to nursing school part-time while working to support our family. Her work ethic and interest in medicine had a big influence on me. My other role model was my grandfather, who was very into the idea of academia being this great pursuit. We talked a lot about medicine and surgery, and I was exposed to the idea: “This is something you could do that would make a big difference for others.”

From there, it was the only thing that ever made sense.

I've always been pretty steadfast and decisive when it comes to big things — when I see it, I know. For example, I only applied to one college — Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. I just knew that's where I wanted to go.

During medical school at Ohio University, I went back to Oxford to visit friends and met a girl. After meeting her once, I texted my mom and told all my friends that I had met the woman I was going to marry. Everybody thought I was overreacting.

But she was the kindest, most engaging and inquisitive person I’d ever met — one of those people who makes you want to be a better person. That's probably somebody you should try to hitch your wagon to if you ever get lucky enough to come across it.

We just celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary.

I grew up coming to the Carolinas in the summer. I always had this dream of leaving Ohio and coming down to the coast of Carolina, but I didn't really know where that would be. Then during medical school, I did an away rotation in Wilmington — and once again, it just felt right.

I was accepted into a general surgery training program in Wilmington. I wasn’t sure if and how I wanted to specialize yet, until I had a couple great mentors who were vascular surgeons — Dr. David Weatherford and Dr. Thomas Eskew. I saw that skilled vascular surgeons were who others called on when they couldn't solve a problem.

That was the turning point at which I became very passionate about vascular surgery, the medical specialty that diagnoses and treats problems with blood vessels, the body’s blood-flow highways.

Vascular surgeons restore blood flow to people’s brains and legs, surgically create veins so people can begin dialysis, and perform incredibly complex aortic repairs. There’s so much to it: technical skill and technique, problem solving, and the combination skill set of completing open and minimally invasive procedures.

If I was going to become a surgeon, I was going to try to become the best that I could — and that was to be like my mentors.

When you’re young and less mature, you might have an idea that you want to become a surgeon, but you don’t really know what it means.

I spent four years in college, four in medical school, five in general surgery residency and two in vascular surgery fellowship. In residency and fellowship, you’re working 80 hours or more most weeks.

I tell medical students: If you can do anything other than surgery and be happy, you should. Surgery is very difficult on your body, on your mind, on your relationships outside of the hospital. It’s gotta be a calling — you have to start with a desire to really want to be a surgeon and know that this is what you're put on this Earth to do.

From there, you have to develop the discipline and work ethic to move through the day. This is not a shift job or a 9-to-5. It demands a lot of you — oftentimes for 18 to 24 hours at a time, if not longer.

But the years of training build you. You mature in your time management and your discipline, and as time progresses, you see the fruits of your labor as you build new operative skills and your general knowledge base.

You realize that maybe the idea of skating through life unimpeded and trying to find leisure is not the goal — that the pursuit of something greater than yourself and always challenging yourself is what brings fulfillment to life.

The days can be very busy sometimes, but when I’m operating, it does not feel cumbersome. I get into a flow state. The hours go by quickly as I give my all to the patient.

Just going through the motions is not acceptable. Their life is at stake. They're in the most vulnerable position that a human being can be in — under general anesthesia, with no ability to give input on what you're doing, and no technical skills or knowledge base to help themselves.

I am the person who is entrusted to get them off the table safely.

The most rewarding part is when people say, “thank you for saving my life,” “thank you for saving my leg,” or “you’ve changed my life.” That makes me realize the importance of what I’ve gotten myself into.