Nicholas Schenck M.D. [facial plastic surgeon, ENT physician]

By: Editor | August 18, 2009 | Ten by Ten

Nicholas L. Schenck, M.D., FACS is Senior Attending Head and Neck Surgeon at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he practices Facial Cosmetic Surgery and Ear Nose and Throat medicine. Prior to 1991 he was Chief of Surgery and Chief of Staff at Mission Bay Hospital in San Diego, and Attending Head and Neck Surgeon at the famed Scripps Clinic Medical Group in La Jolla, Ca. Author of over 35 medical papers, Dr. Schenck is an internationally known authority in Frontal Sinus Disease and Cosmetic Rhinoplasty.  He lives on the ocean in Malibu with his infamous dog “Bruno”.

Walk us through your most colorful childhood memory.
My great-uncle, Nicholas Schenck, ran MGM and Loews theaters in New York City, where I also grew up, for 25 years. Nicholas also has the last private estate on the Cullens Avenue beach in Miami. When I was 10 years old, we went for lunch, and I was amazed by [several] things: one, a giant palm tree growing up to through the glass roof in the dining room, and at the pool outside were sitting Clark Gable and Michael Todd! My uncle was walking around with his Chihuahua and humming. I was wondering what he was humming about, and his wife told me he has a full orchestra playing in his head.

What is the strangest number you have programmed into your phone?
I have no idea; I can barely program my phone.

Describe your closest brush with death.
My girlfriend and I were on the Greek island of Santorini, and she decided it would be great to hike up the hill instead of taking the donkey. I should have known this was a mistake because as we walked up, people were laying on the sidewalk gasping for air. Thirty minutes later I felt faint in a restaurant and asked the owner to call an ambulance. The local “Santorini General” said it would be fastest if I took a taxi. Sitting on the sidewalk waiting for a taxi, I started to “go out” and I thought, this was the end. They revived me in the World War II vintage emergency room when my blood pressure was 220 over 140. The moral of the story is … always take the donkey.

If you could choose any five people, dead or alive, to have dinner with, who would they be and why?
Teilhard de Chardin. He was a visionary French Jesuit, paleontologist and biologist, who, in the 19th century, tried to integrate religion and science, Darwinian evolution with a “seven-day creation” (which of course is nonsense, but he came close).

John Foster Dulles. He was the U.S. Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower when I was a child. I remember he was one of the architects of NATO and SEATO. He and
Kissinger were the last great statesmen. He helped to control communism in the days of Krushev.

Carl Sagan. “Billions and billions.” He joined Cornell in 1968, four years after I graduated, but I still feel I was attached to him. He had the uncanny ability to bring science to everyday life. Cosmos was the best-selling science book ever published in English.

Ludwig von Beethoven. Classic symphonies created from agony and ecstasy. He was a really “immortal beloved.”

Albert Einstein. I would love to have a Grey Goose martini with him to hear him explain the incomprehensible theory of relativity. Relative to today, Einstein once said, “The hardest thing to understand is the income tax.” Spock could also attend.

What do you consider your greatest failure?
Not being in sync with my emotions.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Children always like to be thought of as your greatest achievement, so my two sons, Brett and Sandy. For myself, it would be evolving from a physician/surgeon into a wizard.

What is your most cherished possession and why?
Bruno, my dog. Everyone knows why.

How will you spend this evening?
With 10 or 12 friends in my house in Malibu making sure everyone has what they need.

Describe a vivid or recurring dream you’ve had?
Twenty years ago, I built an interesting house on Mt. Soledad in La Jolla, Calif., on a single lane, dead-end street. Since then, I have recurring dreams of a party gone crazy, a fire breaking out and the fire engines being unable to get past the parked cars to the house! I never find out if house actually burned down or not.

How would you define love?
I would define love as unbridled physical, mental and emotional chemistry constrained by trust.

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