The Last Surgeon

About the Book

You wouldn’t know it to look at him. Non-descript and a little disheveled at times, an ordinary dresser driving an ordinary car, speaking ordinary words. A soft voice from a large man, there isn’t even a hint of ego; just a quiet confi dence that welcomes you to his world. Whether the fi rst time or time after time, the fi rst thing you become aware of is that you are in the presence of someone who cares about you. Not about the time, insurance, deductibles or fees, he cares about you as he quietly asks, “How are you feeling?” In spite of all of the technological advances and laboratory discoveries, medicine is still an art, not a science, and Lewis Newberg is a professional in the truest sense that defi nes him as a medical doctor. I was in my own offi ce when my wife called. As I picked up the phone and began to listen, she had that excited-but-apprehensive voice of discovery that comes after four years of laying awake at night watching her husband stop breathing and wondering whether she was dutifully waiting for life to return or this time watching him die. Her muted excitement gave way to cautious optimism as she described a short piece on the noon time news from Philadelphia about a doctor who was having success in helping sleep apnea patients. Can she call the television station to fi nd out who and where this medical man was? My general practitioner was also a poker buddy, and long before everybody was a card shark and every doctor recognized sleep apnea as the danger it is he sent me to a local hospital that had been fortunate enough to have a wealthy patient who established a sleep study laboratory. Some weeks later, I sat in an examining room as a doctor entered reading my report. Looking up at me, he turned and left, only to come back in and ask if I was the person in the report. The tests had told him to expect to see a 400-pound barely-breathing blob, not a healthy-looking trial attorney with blood oxygen de-saturating into the 50’s and apneas that could be measured with a clock instead of a stopwatch. Two years later, after the ineffective “gold-standard” of treatment — CPAP — and a surgery known more for its alphabetical acronym than its results, my wife found hope in a brief news clip — if only I would agree to at least see this doctor if she could fi nd him and make an appointment. That is how I came to know Dr. Newberg. I am not going to tell you he is a miracle worker. What I am going to tell you is that you need to know him too. For many practitioners, sleep apnea is a disease-du-jour. For Newberg, it is not only his medical fi eld of concentration, it is literally his life.

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