There is an amazing team of people that helps Dr. Cook provide the comprehensive care for which Vital Health Institute is known. They take care of all of the day-to-day details so that Dr. Cook can focus on what he does best – diagnosing and treating complex health conditions including endometriosis and pelvic pain.

The Vital Health Institute staff plays an integral role in the care that we provide, and each of these dedicated staff members will be contributing to the blog and sharing their perspectives and areas of expertise. Here are the people you will be hearing from:

Linda Mavity, Nurse Practitioner – Linda makes sure that all things patient-related are reviewed, discussed and investigated. She is dedicated to her profession, constantly taking courses and reading journals to keep abreast of the latest in medical care for our patients. In fact, she recently completed a rigorous certification process for the North American Menopause Society. Linda will be blogging about relevant and current medical concerns that our patients deal with every day. She has worked with Dr. Cook since 2000.

Jennifer “Jenn” Lieu, Medical Assistant – Jenn runs the back office and makes sure that all the detailed instructions from Linda and Dr. Cook are completed and conveyed to the patients. Jenn is very personable and incredibly knowledgeable about all the services VHI offers. She has a brilliant career in medicine ahead of her; she is currently attending San Francisco University. Jenn has worked with Dr. Cook since 2002.

Colleen Musumeci, Medical Assistant – Colleen is the newest addition to our staff, but she comes with a lot of medical experience and is excited to share her knowledge with you. She is kind, calm and compassionate and is excited to be a part of our team, working with our great patients. Colleen has worked with Dr. Cook since 2010.

Jeannette Garcia, Front Office Coordinator – When you call or drop by our office, Jeannette is usually the first person to greet you. She is a ray of sunshine that brightens the lives of everyone she talks to. She ensures that the right person handles your calls. She makes sure our patients have the right forms and schedules all of the appointments. She is the first and last stop for all patients. Jeannette has worked with Dr. Cook since 2007.

Jessica Vehn, Surgery Coordinator – Jessica is a ball of fire. She makes everything involved with your surgery look easy, but behind the scenes she is busy coordinating all the parties: insurance, VHI schedules, hospital schedules, surgeon schedules, equipment and more. She ensures that everyone is prepped and ready for the surgery. She is willing to help in any way she can. Jessica has worked with Dr. Cook since 2007.

Lene Joy, Nutritionist and Health Coach – Nutrition plays a huge role in our health. Lene is an amazing cook who knows how to make healthy, cost-effective meals, often bringing in food for the staff to eat. Lene will be sharing her ideas on healthy eating, the role of supplements and how a Health Coach can help you regain your health. Lene has worked with Dr. Cook since 2007.

Michelle Waterstreet, New Patient Coordinator and Business Manager – Michelle has been a part of VHI since 2002 when she started as the Front Desk Coordinator and Surgery Scheduler before becoming the Business Manager. She loves talking with patients and getting all things in order to make their visits and their interactions with VHI as smooth and comfortable as possible. If you have any questions, she is the go-to person.

The Staff at VHI is excited to share our insights and information with you. If there is a topic you’d like to see on our blog, please send us an email at michelle@vitalhealth.com.

As a healthcare practitioner who has devoted my life to helping diagnose and treat women with endometriosis and pelvic pain, I see the real-life pain and suffering caused by this disease. The magnitude of the pain and suffering and the ensuing impact on quality of life can be almost incomprehensible.

The first worldwide study on the societal impact of endometriosis was presented recently at the 26th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. This study found a significant loss of productivity of over 11 hours per woman per week. Read more…»

My vision in creating Vital Health Institute was to provide the best possible medical care for patients in a respectful healing environment. Simply put, my goal was to correct the medical problems that patients presented to me. But no one seemed to have the answers. In spite of having the good fortune to train at some of the best institutions in the world with some of the best doctors, I wasn’t able to find anyone who understood what this disease was really all about and what was needed to fix the problem. Thus, I embarked on my 20-year medical journey to seek the answers to these questions. Read more…»

I learned some important lessons in New Orleans. The most important lesson was to completely trust what my patients were telling me about their bodies and the pain they were experiencing.

I had one patient in particular who came to see me six weeks after she had surgery with another physician. Read more…»

This award-winning research definitely opened up the door to a fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Wow! Another step and another door opened to an amazing opportunity. I mean, Johns Hopkins! This was arguably the best fellowship at the best medical school in the country. Read more…»

How far I had come and how lucky I was to have the support of so many great people! They say that opportunity is the result of hard work in preparation for taking advantage of the right circumstances. My mom and dad had taught me discipline and a great work ethic. They also taught me humility, maybe even a little too much, but they are great parents who raised three amazing sons. I am so proud of my brothers. Any parent knows how challenging it is to raise successful, well-adjusted children.

Anyway, although it had been 12 years since high school, where I was an ok student, here I was standing on the stage being given the presentation for the best research in the world for an OB/GYN resident physician in 1987. How did that happen? Read more…»

I headed out of Houston in 1985 having completed 4 hot muggy years of medical school to become a medical doctor. It was official; degree in hand I was actually a real medical doctor, but I needed to undergo additional postgraduate training. In my case this would be four more years in an OB/GYN residency-training program. The OB/GYN program at Wichita (University School of Medicine at Wichita) was a unique and very special program headed up by a guy named Daniel Roberts, MD, PhD. He was a benevolent dictator, very tough but also provided an unsurpassed training experience. Read more…»

“You are kidding me?  You want to become a doctor?  You can’t stand the sight of blood.”  That was my Mom’s reaction to my decision to go into medicine.  Things did kind of gross me out when I was a kid.  Kind of ironic.  When I got into medical school (Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas), I thought initially that I would become a family physician and go back to Colorado and be a small town Doc.  But once I started seeing patients in medical school, I soon realized that western medicine, in a large part amounted to disease management.  Growing up in a family of engineers, I liked to fix things.  That is where surgery came in.  And I was actually pretty good at it.  I was scared the first day of cadaver lab.  The smell was horrible.  But all that passed after the first day.  I was fascinated with the anatomy and when I got to surgery I saw some of the most amazing things. Read more…»

In last week’s post (“What is endometriosis?”), I said that endometriosis by definition is a disease process where the inside lining of the uterus, the endometrium, flows back up inside of the body around the ovaries and bowel where it implants and begins to grow. Quite frankly a lot of this medical stuff can be quite dry and boring and does not convey what it is like for a woman to have this disease and how it truly impacts her life, her family, her career, her sex life, and her ability to live her life in very basic ways. Read more…»

I am a 5^th generation Californian.  My Grandmother (who has passed away) was in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake as a young girl and was one of few women who attended Berkeley (University of California at Berkeley) in the 1910’s.  I was born and raised in Southern California.  This was before it was one big concrete jungle.  We had fields to pay in and went sailing quite a bit.  My family moved to Evergreen, Colorado when I was in the 9^th grade.  Evergreen is a small town in the mountains of Colorado about a half hour west of Denver.  The nearest paved road was miles from our house.  Quite a change from Southern California. Read more…»