Our faithful Sava Perovic Foundation driver who greets you at the airport on arrival in Belgrade usually has the very latest details of the plan and schedule for you.

If you have arranged accommodations, that may be the best first place to take you to relax, unpack, have a look around, chill out.

Then you can work out the best time and place to meet Dr Djinovic.

It will probably be the next morning at the Foundation office (but that's a guess).

At this moment, the answer to the question “What time is my appointment with the doctor?” is “I don't know.” 

That seems strange, curious or “puzzling” to some patients but it's true so let's not ignore the “elephant in the room”.

We are dedicated to the best possible surgical result for each patient. We are not slaves to the clock nor the schedule.

It not only seems very odd. That is quite unique in the world of medicine. For that reason it deserves explanation.

Our overall schedule is very flexible. We can narrow things down to a particular day in advance but the fine tuning is done close to actual events.

We live in the “Eternal Now”. Days overflow into nights, week days overflow into weekends, time on splashes over into time off.

Although we are trying to live normal lives, our schedule still reflects the overwhelming, 24/7 (in Serbia 00-24) x 365 days per year example of Professor Perovic.

We still struggle to find the best way us ordinary humans can continue to implement the Professor's vision and goal in a sustainable way.

The need for permanent, very highest quality surgical solutions for complex and challenging urogenital problems in order for patients to have good quality of life is absolutely overwhelming.

We hope our new series of surgery videos “While You Were Out” will help people understand us better.

The doctors do as many as 45 surgeries per month.

Almost all take several hours. Short surgeries are very rare.

Some procedures take more than 10 hours of ceaseless work by the entire team of surgeons. They also involve significant amounts of microsurgery. All demand tremendous focus and total concentration. There are sometimes several of those marathon surgeries each week.

Approximately half the total hours of any given month, Dr Djinovic is performing surgery.

Dr Djinovic never takes the easy way or cuts corners or compromises on quality of result. As a result, surgery almost always takes substantially longer than expected.

That pushes the time for the next surgery back, and the next, and the next until it's 10 or 11 pm and we are still in the operating room.

Then there are consultations, patient rounds, administrative matters, reporting, record keeping, family, sleep (oops, no sleep there's an emergency!), flying to other countries to do surgery there, attend congresses, share expertise, make presentations, and so forth and so on.

Operating rooms must be cleaned, sterilized, restocked and prepped each time. Sometimes the next surgery is in another hospital so involves travel.

Those two unpredictable and difficult to calculate factors in our schedule will only disappear when the Sava Perovic Foundation International Center for Highly Specialized Genito-Urethral Reconstructive Surgery completes it's own building in Belgrade.

Plus we only use the country's top anesthesiologists with at least 20+ years of flawless experience (our B Team) and usually only those leading specialists with 30+ years of a perfect record (our A Team) who also have very long and extensive experience working with the Sava Perovic Foundation surgeons.

If the anesthesiologist is delayed for any reason, everything stops and we wait.

Dr Rados said recently: “I'm always in a hurry and I'm always late.” Well, late is usually accurate but he “hurries” like a glacier.

In fact, he is so meticulous during surgery it is exasperating and the surgery is usually a marathon effort requiring exceptional endurance — which means no sprinting.

That is why the Perovic Art of Urogenital Surgery can fit into few medical systems of the world and can be performed by few surgeons.

Dr Djinovic NEVER changes his calculated, deliberate, careful pace.

In the operating room, he is NEVER in a “hurry”.

He maintains his momentum like the reliably predictable rotation of the earth, the rising and falling of the tides and the urgency at which glaciers rush to the sea.

The continuous cycle of: do, examine, analyze, measure, criticize, adjust, improve and the constant search to find something that can be done better than ever before is exhausting.

It is exhausting even for those of us not performing the surgery who are only observing or filming or photographing or asking questions … hour after hour after hour after hour …

You will certainly get all tests needed to determine you are fit for surgery if you didn't get those before arriving.

You will certainly have a pre-operative, personal, private, face-to-face consultation and physical exam with Dr Djinovic.

Your consultation is likely to be at the Sava Perovic Foundation office but might be at one of the two private medical facilities we use most often.

During that frank discussion, every detail of the surgery will be reviewed and every question will be answered to your satisfaction. It will take as long as it needs to take.

Only if you and the surgeon agree to move forward and have the surgery, only if you are able to confidently and knowledgeably sign the Informed Consent Form will there be surgery as appointed.

For that reason, the pre-op meeting between you and Dr Djinovic is an absolute certainty.

But, please allow some flexibility regarding the exact time and the exact place.