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

career aspirations. His calm and gentle ways balanced me out perfectly. I am so grateful that I have found a guy who is sure enough of his own self to kiss me goodbye in the morning and say, ‘Have fun, darling, see you in two days.’ I had worked extraordinarily hard in medical school, which translated into a pretty decent graduating grade. Andrew knew that I would carry that drive for success into my doctoring life. I had already decided that I wanted to be a surgeon and we also knew that children were definitely in our plan. In the early 1990s a woman managing to have both a big career and a family was pretty uncommon, but with Andrew’s support I didn’t ever think it was impossible.
    Dr Smith, my medical student mentor, was the reason that I chose to go to Nambour Hospital yet again for my first two years as a doctor. It also didn’t hurt that all my friends were heading there too. I thought that being in Nambour would go a long way to set me up for a career as a general surgeon. Traditionally, if someone wanted to be a surgeon, they tried to be an intern at one of the large metropolitan hospitals, where they would be more likely to be known to important surgeons who populated the surgicaltraining selection committees. I worried, however, that being an intern at those hospitals could also be a disadvantage. There were many more junior doctors to compete with there and it would be very likely that all I would get to do was mountains of paperwork. It would have been hard to get the opportunity to stand out, let alone get to spend any time in the operating theatre. Nambour had a great reputation and was a busy hospital doing most types of major surgery. More importantly, they only accepted nine new interns that year, so I thought it would be much more likely that I might get the chance to step up, take on more responsibility and get a little more hands-on experience than my big city counterparts. I also knew that having a mentor like Dr Smith looking out for me and hopefully recommending me for selection for surgical training was really important. I felt that Dr Smith was keen to see me succeed and I worked very hard not to disappoint him.
    Dr Smith was a larger than life character, quick off the mark with witty comments like the ‘girls can’t do surgery’ one. For all his joking, however, he could not have been more encouraging of my surgical career during my time as a student in Nambour, and it quickly became obvious that he truly believed that girls could do surgery, and do it quite well. Dr Smith was a terrific general surgeon, adored by many of his patients for his no-punches-pulled, commonsense approach. It could also be extremely tough to work for him at times. He was well known in surgical circlesas a strict taskmaster, expecting hard work and meticulous care from all his staff. Not such a bad expectation, I suppose. Everyone really had to be on their game. His fearsome reputation was such that merely mentioning to a colleague that I was going to work in Nambour often produced gasps about how hard it would be. But, everyone also knew that doctors who came out of Nambour had a really good grounding in surgery because of the sheer hard work and the teaching Dr Smith provided.
    Having worked with Dr Smith as a student, I knew what he expected and how many hours I would have to put in to please him. I tried hard to do what he asked and, knowing what a great doctor he was, took advantage of every pearl of surgical wisdom that spilt from his lips. He loved to talk about what he called clinical acumen – a type of surgical magic, really. This was all about coming to the right conclusion with insufficient information. In other words, to be a great surgeon, you couldn’t rely on a lot of tests, you had to be a natural; you had to have surgery flowing through your veins. Whenever I delivered some sort of diagnostic blunder, Dr Smith would poke his finger at me and say, ‘Clinical