Dr. Faeza Kazmier Helps People Builds Lifelong Confidence

If someone were to call Dr. Faeza Kazmier a visual person you might think that was a bit crass since she is a plastic surgeon, but her journey from England to the United States—and from high school science class to being a revered medical professional—has been guided by what she has seen and the impact that has had on her.

Go back several decades, for example. She was a high schooler in Fort Wayne, Ind. and her AP Biology teacher Ms. Kampschmidt—whom Dr. Kazmier still stays in touch with—encouraged her to join a science exploration program where she would learn about the intricacies of the human body, such as chromosomal analysis, and where she vividly recalls witnessing an operating theater.

At that operating theater, Kazmier and her classmates sat in an auditorium, and through a glass window they witnessed a live open-heart surgery.

“It was a very inspiring, awesome moment to be able to see somebody working on another human, and being able to change that person’s life,” said Dr. Kazmier recently, sitting inside her office at Watson Clinic Women’s Center on Lakeland Hills Blvd.

“With plastic surgery, we’re shaping it, molding it, creating it—and that’s art.”

During nearly 14 years of higher education learning and training, Kazmier saw a lot. She saw how different types of doctors generally approached patients, she saw the difference between managing health issues and fixing them, and she saw herself as potentially pursuing a number of career paths in medicine. At one point she was on track to become an OBGYN, then she thought cardiology might be her calling, but during a week of plastic surgery observation her long term vision for her career came into focus.

She remembers seeing a cleft lip repair on a baby, a breast augmentation and a TRAM breast reconstruction, all in a day’s work.   

“We saw things got fixed…and there’s nothing for [the patient] to see of the work that was done,” she said. “With plastic surgery, we’re shaping it, molding it, creating it—and that’s art.”

That experience led her to the University of Missouri, where she completed a general surgery internship and plastic surgery residency, and where she also met her husband, Dr. Peter Kazmier, an orthopaedic trauma surgeon at Watson Clinic.

The couple moved to Lakeland, and Dr. Elisabeth Dupont and Kazmier were the pillars Watson Clinic opened and built the women’s center upon.

More than 17 years later, Dr. Kazmier performs surgery as many as four days per week, and she has served thousands of Polk County residents over the years. She and her team do everything from breast lifts, enlargement and augmentation, to skin cancer treatment and reconstruction, to facial rejuvenation and skin care options that help people feel more confident.

Dr. Kazmier says “everybody wants to look and feel younger,” and as a lifelong learner she is always combing through medical data and reading studies to see what is actually making a difference in that arena. She nods her head affirmatively when asked if the internet is filled with a lot of misinformation about her profession.

Her goal with a patient is to truly understand his or her goals, explain the process and paint a picture of what the end result will mean long term.

“It’s incredible when I run into someone in the community and they tell me that I restored their confidence,” she said. “That’s what keeps me excited and motivated.”

What you will find when talking to locals or reading online reviews is that part of what makes Dr. Kazmier so beloved as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon is how she treats her patients with such class and care.

She said a book that had a definite impact on her career is the novel “Cutting for Stone” by Dr. Abraham Verghese.

“In that book, one of the questions that a surgeon asks a young surgeon is, ‘What’s an emergency care that can be administered by ear?’ And the answer is, ‘Words of comfort.’”

She says her job involves “caring for the whole person” and the more that she takes the time to get to know patients, the better she can understand and help them meet their personal aspirations.

And when that happens, it makes for a very satisfied, happy doctor, who is quick to credit God and her parents for the fact she gets to wake up every morning to a job she loves and finds purpose in.

Her parents were born in Bangladesh, and her father, Muhammad Rashid, experienced a very difficult childhood, but academic achievements provided him a ticket to opportunity that neither he nor his family has ever taken for granted. In fact, he is still at work in higher education, as a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Florida Poly.

Dr. Kazmier has passed along the importance of education to her four children, and she acknowledges that in many places around the world education and pursuing your dreams is only for the select few—but thankfully that is not the case in the United States.

As she processes how far she has come and the blessings she experiences through helping people find healing and hope, she says she remains in awe of it all.

“Every single time I operate, I always turn to my staff and say, ‘Isn’t it amazing that we can do this, and how we heal?’ Our bodies are amazing.”