Consultation hours were over, but one patient would not leave. He was a surgeon from Beverly Hills who had brought an interpreter. For more than 30 minutes, he explained the American market to me, a patient giving the doctor a lesson in business. Then he said I should open a clinic in Beverly Hills.
The next patient was an orthopedic surgeon from Saudi Arabia. He said the same thing: Open in Saudi Arabia, and soon. His reason was the same, too. There is nothing like this in his country.
Doctors as patients are not rare. Of the dozens of people I see in a day, two or three are almost always doctors or other medical professionals. They do not just write “physician” on the intake form. They tell me their specialty and where they practice, and they usually begin not by asking me to open a clinic but by asking me for an explanation.
One told me: “I tried several treatments for hair loss in my home country, and none of them worked. This time I wanted to try natural ingredients. I searched for a long time before I found this place.”
A moment later he added that he knew medicine, and asked me to explain, in medical terms, why this clinic was right for him.
Most patients ask whether they can get better. These patients ask why they would. DHT, perifollicular inflammation, telogen effluvium — the vocabulary moves without friction. I do not avoid this moment. With nowhere to hide, it is the most honest time in the consultation. I explain the mechanism, carrying the language of old Korean prescriptions into the language modern medicine uses, and I separate what I know from what I do not.
But I do not explain in words alone. I take them to the garden first, where medicinal herbs grow. “Natural ingredients” sounds ordinary as an explanation. Watch the herbs growing in the soil, and you understand.
Next comes the head spa, where patients experience the treatment methods with their own scalp rather than hearing about them. While they are in Korea, we finish their hair in the style of a Korean actress, and patients from abroad say they feel, for a moment, like Koreans. They are receiving treatment and living a wellness life at the same time.
Garden, consulting room, head spa, styling. None of them is unusual alone. What is rare is a place where all of them grow from a single root, Korean medicine, within one person’s day. I think of it as a system rather than a clinic.
At the first visit, I hand over a treatment plan that sets out how long the treatment will take. Told it may run beyond a year, doctors begin willingly. They want to experience it, not judge it by words. The medicine and topical products become a daily routine for that period.
Around the third to sixth month, I ask about the medicine before the hair: “Have you been taking it?” Those who have made it a routine say they sleep well and their digestion is good. In a hair loss patient, what changes first is everyday life. I see that as the first sign of wellness. The hair speaks later: the inflammation settles, shedding slows, and hair holds volume when they blow-dry it.
As the period in the plan draws to a close, I check the symptoms again. If some remain, I suggest treating them a little longer. Patients who feel they have gotten what they wanted ask a different question: Is the treatment over now? They hand the ending to me. I take that question as the report card on the promise in the treatment plan.
After I recheck the symptoms and introduce a maintenance program, most patients keep using functional hair care. And one day they bring a family member. Our first-visit intake form asks how patients heard of us. More than 60 percent of first-time patients check “referral from an acquaintance.” Hearing that someone told you to go is worth more than any explanation.
I am grateful to hear there is nothing like this at home, but I do not hear only praise. This is how I read it: places that cure, places that rest and places that beautify exist in every country. What is missing is a place where the three connect within one person’s time and stay beside the patient after the cure. Wellness, as I understand it, is not the absence of disease. It is sleep, digestion and one’s own appearance holding steady in everyday life. Doctors want that for their own patients.
It is not complete. One doctor’s time is limited, and distance thins any relationship. So I am keeping memory in a system rather than in my head, with help from artificial intelligence. The aim is to stay beside a person so that, in their 70s and 80s, they can still wear the hairstyle they want.
Two or three times a day, a doctor walks in asking me for an explanation. Now and then one leaves asking me to open a clinic. The explanation wins the first visit. The relationship wins the rest.
Lee Moon-won
Lee Moon-won is chief doctor of Lee Moon Won Korean Medicine Clinic. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.
khnews@heraldcorp.com
