Photograph of Dr. Buddha— to be added
Medicine taught me many things. Patients taught me what matters.
I trained in internal medicine, then went further — fellowships in geriatrics, in palliative care, and in integrative medicine at the Andrew Weil Center. Each discipline offered a different lens on the same truth: a human being is more than a chart.
Geriatrics taught me complexity — the art of caring for a person carrying four diagnoses, ten medications, and eighty years of life at once. Palliative medicine taught me that comfort and dignity are not what we offer when treatment fails; they are treatment. And integrative medicine granted me permission to look beyond the prescription pad — toward nutrition, toward mind and body, toward traditions of healing older than our hospitals.
I have spent my career building the kind of care I believe in — as Chief of Geriatrics at New York Downtown Hospital, as Director of Geriatric and Palliative Care at White Plains Hospital, and today as medical director and palliative consultant to nursing and rehabilitation facilities across Westchester.
In 2016, I founded Serene Integrative HealthCare — the practice I built to make this kind of medicine possible: independent of insurance, so that time and attention are never rationed, and grounded in the belief that conventional and integrative medicine are strongest when they work together.
The record, plainly stated
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"Comfort and dignity are not what we offer when treatment fails. They are treatment."
Unhurried, thorough, and honest
When you become my patient, the first thing I give you is time. Our first meeting is long by design — I want the whole of your story: the medical history, certainly, but also how you sleep, what you eat, what worries you, what you have already tried, and what you hope to reclaim. Only then do I begin to think about a plan.
The plan itself draws on everything I have: conventional medicine where it serves you, integrative approaches where they serve you better, and honest referrals when another's hands are the right ones. I coordinate with your existing specialists rather than replace them.
And then — this, to me, is the heart of it — I stay. You reach me directly when you need me. We refine the plan as your life and health evolve. Medicine, practiced properly, is not a transaction. It is a relationship that deepens over years.
That's my story. I'd be glad to hear yours.
If the way I practice sounds like the care you've been looking for, call or write. We'll talk about what you're facing, and whether my practice is the right fit.