Read How to Do a Liver Transplant for Free Online Page A

room. The gallbladder clings to the undersurface of the liver, just peeping out. It doesn’t fully reveal itself until a long slender poker is inserted into another port and the liver is gently lifted to expose the full nature of the problem. Will it be simple or difficult? You just don’t know until that very moment andthe anticipation can be really exciting. If the gallbladder is translucent and soft, the nursing staff will smile because they all know that this will be a quick and easy operation. But if the gallbladder is thickened and swollen with infection, everyone will groan, knowing we will be there for the next two hours while I painstakingly scrape and scratch the gallbladder away from its attachments. I grimace because I know my arms will ache for the whole of the next day from being held aloft for so long.
    The real genius of laparoscopic surgery is that it is a great spectator sport. Everyone in the room can watch what I am doing on the big screen. If you record your operation and put it on YouTube, the whole world can watch too. There is no capacity to have a bad surgical day because everyone can see your hesitation. In fact, keyhole surgery is like a computer game with real life consequences. Your hands are working at waist level while your eyes are looking up at a screen. Who knew that what I thought were misspent hours on the PlayStation playing Tomb Raider were actually excellent preparation for laparoscopic surgery. This type of operation becomes exhausting if the surgery is not done with the fewest number of movements possible, using relaxed and graceful hands. Learning laparoscopic surgery can be torturous, as you maintain your pincer grip with your arms up in the air for hours. All the tension is concentrated in the small muscles of your hands and they ache for days afterward. Using long slender graspers andscissors, the gallbladder is separated from its attachment to the liver. The little artery that brings blood to the gallbladder and the tube that connects it to the bile duct are secured with permanent and very expensive titanium clips. It is amazing how many people worry that they will set off the metal detector at the airport with these fastening devices, but I reassure them that they are way too small to trigger the machine. When the gallbladder is free, a plastic bag is unfurled in the abdomen and the gallbladder is stuffed inside it. The bag is extricated via the hole in the belly button and this can be the trickiest part of the operation. If the stones are big I have to manhandle them out or crush them up. A clamp, not unlike infant delivery forceps, is used to grasp the stone, then I lean back and pull really hard. Slowly but surely, the skin yields around the bulging stone and when it gives, it is like popping the cork of a champagne bottle and everyone in the room gives a cheer. This is really fitting, because the end of the operation is usually a great celebration of the patient setting out on the road to recovery from this dreadful disease.

It seems that I’m a doctor now
    A fter a fun-filled graduation ceremony at Brisbane’s City Hall that involved more than one bottle of red wine and a midnight dip in the fountain out front, it was time to grow up. I was now Dr Kellee Slater MBBS, with second class honours, I might add. Internship and the realities of daily working life loomed. It began to dawn on me that I would actually be responsible for looking after real patients who might die if I made a mistake. This worried the hell out of me (and still does). That last carefree week of university also saw another big moment in my life – my marriage to Andrew.The two ceremonies were held within days of each other in order to squeeze in a short honeymoon before I started work. While I was not so confident about the doctoring part, I was more than ready to be married. I knew for sure that Andrew was the only one for me. He understood me so well and gave me the wings to follow my