How to Do a Liver Transplant by Kellee Slater Page A

‘A lot of girls come in here and say they want to be surgeons. Some of them start, but most of them don’t make it, you know.’
    I squirmed in my chair and didn’t know what to say. She was crushing my dreams. I waited another hour. I had to pee.
    The secretary looked at me this time and said, ‘Look, I don’t think he is coming, do you?’
    She clearly wanted me out of there. I was reluctant to leave because what if he appeared a moment later and I wasn’t there? Was this a test? Was he waiting to see what I’d do in a tricky situation? After two and a half hours, Ibegan to think she was right. I decided to go. My one vindication was that, years later when I returned to work at that hospital as a surgeon, Professor Strong’s secretary also became mine and we laugh together when I remind her, in a good-natured way, that some girls do become surgeons.
    Having failed to gain even the most meagre advantage by getting to know the surgeons who might grant me a future, I turned my attention to preparing for the surgical interviews. That year I was competing with 35 other doctors for only eight positions. In only my second year out of medical school, I was the most junior of the applicants and the only woman applying. Despite my youth, all my after-hours work in the operating theatre meant my experience gave me a definite leg-up on the rest. That night of the interviews, Dr Smith must have also spoken up for me and told them to take a chance on the unknown girl from Nam.
    Shortly after, I received my acceptance letter to commence training in general surgery and I was elated.

The life of a surgical registrar
    M y first year as a fully fledged surgical registrar got off to a terrific start when I was assigned to work in a hospital situated in a picturesque beachside setting. Working at a coastal hospital was a coveted posting and six months there meant living the high life in a beachfront apartment and hanging out every night with the other junior doctors in the local restaurant precinct. The hospital was two minutes from the shore and there was a spectacular view of the sparkling Pacific Ocean from every floor. The transient tourist population made every day feel like a working vacation.
    My move to this new location also proved to be the beginning of a very testing time for my marriage. The rigours of surgical training would mean changing locations every six months as I toured the hospitals of Queensland. From our wedding day to the time I finished training, Andrew and I could count 12 different homes. This is what breaks many budding surgeons – living away from their family for long periods of time. Andrew and I had to live separately off and on for the entire four years I was a registrar and it was tough. He had a job working for the National Bank in Nambour – just like my father in his youth – and my move hundreds of kilometres away from him meant he had to live with my parents, eating meat and three veg with them every night while I was enjoying the nightlife with my fellow registrars. He kept smiling through it all, though, maybe because of all the whisky my mother gave him. Andrew began to sacrifice a lot for the sake of my career and it became clear to us that our marriage would not survive if we both wanted to build big careers. Andrew decided to make most of the compromises and stepped back from the bank and instead pursued his lifelong dream of becoming a commercial pilot. This job at least let him move around with me and we had great weekend trips when Andrew would fly me away in tiny rented Gazelle aeroplanes. We made it work.

    I threw myself into my new role – I was now a surgical registrar, ready to heal the sick. I was scheduled to be ‘on call’ my very first night on the job. This meant that I worked a normal day and, when the sun went down, my phone began to ring. On the line would be the emergency department, calling about patients with surgical