Dr S K Dicksheet – man of compassion & courage

This is a profile of an incredible NRI who though affected with physical afflictions has fought against daunting odds to come up trumps and provide succor to millions of people in his country of origin INDIA. His name is Dr Sharad Kumar Dicksheet, who is bound to wheelchair, paralyzed by an unfortunate accident in 1978 in the prime of his life, he also lost his voice box to the dreaded ailment of cancer, which led to the removal of his larynx and neck muscles, and then he had to battle two heart attacks in the years 1988 and 1994.

All this, and yet the man is unfazed and remains ever optimistic and full of spirits. He is reputed to be an incredibly quick plastic surgeon, who lights up the lives of thousands of poor Indians every year, giving them a new face and a new future and has performed over 45000 plastic surgeries in the past decade, visits India every year since 1968 and spends a hectic five months holding free plastic surgery camps for poorer sections of the people, held camps for Mumbai for the last 10 years every day for three weeks. His is a story, which is worth a reading.

His life and times – He was born in a simple and unassuming family in Wardha, Maharashtra, his family comprised of dad Sitaram Dixit and mom Maltibai, three brothers and three sisters who lived in a three room chawl in Wardha. In his childhood he was reputed to be a naughty and a bright child who played hooky, pulled off pranks, and popped tricky questions in the class to enjoy the embarrassment of his teachers and also possessed tremendous grasping power who helped his friends and even his elder siblings with their homework. His dad Sitaram Dixit, was a remarkable man who was in the British Postal Service who traveled to eastern Europe, Africa and west Asia during the World Wars, won a Victoria Cross for carrying salary sacks to safety, and retired as a postmaster, and also taught them swimming, painting and cycling, which was quite unconventional for girls of the thirties and forties and also lessons of simplicity, that is, pious and austere.

There was another man who impressed him and he was the India’s Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi and to this Dr Dicksheet says - I didn't understand why so many people lined up to see this simple man in dhoti and shawl with a walking-stick, I realized later and he was much more than the Father of the Nation -. The boy born in Pandharpur had unknowingly imbibed the spirit of service and sacrifice that had permeated Wardha, matriculating from Raddock High School (renamed Mahatma Gandhi School) in the year of Independence; Dicksheet went to college in Nagpur dreaming of entering the civil service.Later he wanted to become a doctor, obtained a seat in Nagpur Medical College, but let go of it because he thought his sister, Snehal, also wanted to become a doctor: the family could not afford the medical education costs of two children and young Dicksheet decided to do BSc. in Nizam's College, Hyderabad and for which he had a scholarship. His sister Snehal finally did not opt for medicine, so Diksheet joined the Medical College next year and said - I wanted to do medicine because doctors were respected and well-dressed, they also made good money -.After medical graduation in 1956, he had a six-month stint in the Railways, passed the Army Medical Corps exam and he also found himself among 50 Indian doctors who qualified for internships offered by the American Medical Association in hospitals across the United States. At that point he confesses he was in a dilemma whether to join the army or see the world and reveals that he was not allowed to travel abroad during his commission in the army and so deliberately flunked his medical tests.

To raise Rs 6000 to travel to the US, he took up a new job, saved Rs 5,000, borrowed the balance from a friend's father-in-law, and left for Wisconsin, U S A in 1958. The internship at Lutheran Hospital fetched him a $250 stipend out of which he sent $200 to his parents every month. He did a four-year surgery course in Grace Hospital near Detroit, and then specialized in plastic surgery, easily got a job in a Detroit clinic at $40,000 per annum but was always keen on returning to India. He says that when he came back to India in the year 1968 looking for a place to settle down, his friends told him to go back since there was no scope for a plastic surgeon in India, they suggested that I live in America and conduct surgery camps here and offered to organize the camps. The same year he participated in his first plastic surgery camp, organized by the Lions Club of Worli, Mumbai and that marked the beginning of his annual 'pilgrimages' to India. Plastic surgery was a new field in India and there were just a handful of specialists, he participated in the Mumbai camps for 10 years doing 30 surgeries every day for three weeks without payment. Mumbai went out of his camp schedule in 1978 because the crowds became unmanageable and the organizers had to call the police to escort him out. After the first camp in Mumbai, Dicksheet completed a course in ophthalmology in London in 1969, he had kept his eyes open while on his visit to India: he had seen a crying need for eye surgeons all over the country. In 1971 an industrialist invited him to a surgery camp in Dholka, near Ahmedabad, went just as an observer, and was shocked by two deaths due to the camp organizers' carelessness and lack of respect for life and it was then he realized the need for a good organization backed by dedicated people and professionally competent medical staff.

Meanwhile life in Fairbanks, USA where he had taken up a new job in the early seventies, was hectic in the midst of nose jobs, breast implants, and hair transplants and eye surgeries and on the other hand also indulged in a lot of skiing, water-skiing and played tennis in summer, he had a thriving and a successful plastic surgery practice in Fairbanks, Alaska, until a car accident in 1978 left the right side of his body paralyzed and changed the very facet of his life, death almost knocked at his doors, but he displayed indomitable spirit, he could not move his right hand and so he started using the left, and when he fully recovered three years later, he had become proficient in southpaw surgery. The accident took away his job and made good the loss by enabling him to win three cosmetic surgery fellowships in Mexico, where he worked with the world famous cosmetic surgeon Gurrero Santos; in New York, with Thomas Rees who specialized in celebrities; and in Switzerland, with body contour specialist Trudy Vogt, after which he taught at King's County Hospital in Brooklyn. Later he lost his voice box to cancer, had four surgeries at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, and his larynx and neck muscles were removed and could not speak for several years, he had a battery-operated device that he held near the throat each time he spoke; his voice sounded like a robot's, then learnt oesophagal speech using the food pipe, inhaling and exhaling air to modulate and since there is no connection between his nose and lungs, he breathes through his neck, a small metal tube in his throat keeps the food pipe open. The opening in the neck is covered with a special cloth that filters dust and that is the reason he finds it hard to breathe in warm, dusty weather. Another misfortune struck him when he had his first heart attack in 1988; had an angioplasty, the second attack, a massive one in January 1994, occurred while he was at a plastic surgery camp in Ahmedabad. Flown back to New York, he had bypass surgery at Mt Sinai Hospital.

His cardiologist, Dr Jonathan Halperin, described his condition as "acute anterior myocardial infarction", three of the arteries had blocks, and the entire anterior wall and lateral part of the heart had fibrosed. After discharge, the cardiologist advised him to have a heart transplant but Dicksheet did not want any more surgery on himself and he says that since 1982 doctors had been telling me I was going to die soon.For many years, Dicksheet was the only plastic surgeon in the camps in India and then he inspired other US surgeons to volunteer their services and paid their air fares and after he formed the 'India Project' with the Plastic Surgery Educational Foundation, plastic surgeons from America have been flying in for two-week stints at the camps at their own expense, there are ten such regulars and for them the entire thing has been an experience of a lifetime: the camps offered them a chance to do community work and operate under tough conditions. In the year 1991 Dicksheet formed a $1.5 million trust with his life insurance for which he paid $45,000 a year and when invested the money fetched him more than $100,000 a year, part of it went for research and part to fund the expenses of plastic surgeons visiting the camps and he says - It should help others carry on his work after his lifetime, along with five other trusts he has formed in India, the camps have been successful for 25 years and I hope they will continue forever -.

He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in the year 1998 and 1999.

Personal Life – He had two broken marriages. Wilda Peterson, an American of Norwegian origin whom he met as a student in Wisconsin and married in 1961, left him four years later, the children, Shari and Sharad Jr., went with her: Sharad, majoring in music and today has his own band. Shari, who did her MBA, works in Michigan. In 1979 Dicksheet married Tapti Bose, 25 years his junior, who had met him for a nose surgery in Mumbai in 1975 and a year after their daughter Supriya was born, he was struggling with cancer, he said - I could not give her much of a family life, and so she asked for a divorce in 1989 a year after his first heart attack. Today he lives alone in Brooklyn,USA and does everything himself. He does a 15-minute puja in the morning, washes his clothes himself, and cooks his own food, does all his chores sitting down, and uses the wall as support to walk around. He writes articles for medical journals, corresponds with coordinators of the next camps in India, and listens to music and at bedtime, he recites verses from the ninth chapter of the Gita annotated by Annie Besant and has memorized the whole chapter.

He also loves Hindi old movies and is a fan of Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Mumtaz, Dev Anand and Madhuri Dixit.

Final Views - The surgeon has transformed the lives of numerous young women by giving them an eligible face and a new life and there are women who come back to the camps every year, not for follow-up surgery, but simply to thank him for making marriage possible and bring their husbands and children along. He remains a man of few words but work wise remains lightning quick in surgery though age has caught up with him.He says - One who serves the suffering is a real human being and God dwells in him. Gandhiji's message was the same that real service to God is service to humanity and calls the operation theatre as his temple, I see God in my patients.

ABOUT HIM a famous American surgeon Dr Janet Parler said he makes surgery look so simple, he has a phenomenal amount of endurance and stamina.