How to Do a Liver Transplant by Kellee Slater Read Free Book Online Page B

couldn’tbelieve I had done it. I replayed the surgery over and over in my head. I was walking on air, in a euphoric state that was the reward for all the other, less than desirable stuff I had had to do in my day. That excitement has never diminished, even now after I have been operating for years, and I guess when it does, it will be time to stop. Those nights following George around were an incredible experience. We forged an unbreakable friendship and George is still always there to help me out when I need him.

I can’t believe they are going to let me operate on people
    S tarting to operate on patients marked the beginning of a surgical way of life. Dr Smith instilled in me a work ethic of seeing my patients seven days a week and I still adhere to that to this day. He quite rightly pointed out that if I was going to have all the fun of operating on people, then I had to be totally responsible for their wellbeing 24 hours a day, no matter how tired I was. There was no way he was going to look after my patientswhile I was off lounging around with my friends telling them how good I thought I was. I took a lot of ribbing for doing all this extra work and missing out on the more social aspects of intern life. But I had a plan. I wanted to be a surgeon and somehow needed to fit in having a few babies along the way. It was essential that I put the rush on surgical training before my eggs withered and died. Women having children during surgical training were rare when I went through. There was no part-time training and no one I heard of had ever applied for maternity leave whilst a surgical trainee. It wasn’t really needed because there simply weren’t many women general surgeons – at least I had certainly never met one. The only female role model I was aware of was a wonderful kidney doctor called Carmel Hawley. Although she was not a surgeon, Dr Hawley had a busy and prestigious career along with a lot of children. She managed to do it all really well. I wanted to be like her and I saw all this hard work as a junior as a necessary means to attempt to hurry through surgical training to achieve my goal of surgery and motherhood. Dr Hawley showed me that there was a way.
    So, following the first two years as a junior doctor, my next step was to become a surgical registrar. In order to do this, I had to compete for admission to surgical training with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons. Once accepted I had four years to learn everything there was to know about surgery. Those years in Nambour had left mein good shape to climb up this next rung in the ladder and I began my push. Thanks to Dr Smith, I was head and shoulders above doctors two or three years older than me in terms of surgical experience. To apply for surgical training, I needed to pass a series of examinations called the Surgical Primary. These consisted of three days of written and practical examinations with hundreds of multiple choice questions. These exams were touted to be really difficult, testing all aspects of anatomy, physiology and pathology. They also cost a thousand non-refundable dollars per attempt and for me this was a real incentive to only do it once. This money was due to be paid several months prior to the exam, well before I had done enough work to think I had any shot at passing. I wrote out my cheque and stood in front of the mailbox for several minutes before I allowed my hand to release the envelope into the slot. Posting that cheque made me put my arse in gear and study enough to pass. I went straight home and did little else for the next six months other than eat, sleep, work and study.
    I gave up everything except for a ration of an hour of TV a night. At the time, Andrew and I were huge fans of The X-Files . I discovered that the actress Gillian Anderson, who played Dana Scully, would be coming to Australia to promote the X-Files movie, and that she would be doing an autograph signing at a local shopping centre.