How to Do a Liver Transplant by Kellee Slater

spoke of them in hushed tones and there were many legendarystories about their intellect and stamina. Any problem that could not be solved by other surgeons ended up in their hands. They were constantly followed around by a troop of surgical groupies, usually transplant surgeons from overseas, who had come to train and observe their skill.
    The head of the unit was Professor Russell Strong, the surgeon who I had dismally failed to meet with a couple of years before. He was Australia’s most celebrated surgeon, a Companion of St Michael and St George, a Commander of the Order of Australia and a Queenslander of the Year to name just a few of his accolades. Alongside the great American surgeon Thomas Starzl, Professor Strong was a pioneer of liver transplants and was the first person to perform a successful one in Australia. In a procedure eventually named the ‘Brisbane Technique’, he was also the first person in the world to cut an adult donor liver in half to get a piece small enough to transplant into a child. He was a bona-fide living legend, a man who never needed to say a word to command the respect of those around him. This was lucky because he rarely uttered one. However, whenever he did speak, incredible pearls of wisdom would spill out of his mouth and any person fortunate enough to be in earshot would be taught a lesson in surgery they would not easily forget.
    He once shared with me how he was feeling before he did his first liver transplant for a child dying of liver failure. Thankfully, children rarely die, so child-size donor liversare uncommon. For a child to die of liver failure, however, is more common and something had to be done to bridge the shortfall and stop babies dying while they were waiting for a new liver to come along. By borrowing the techniques used to remove cancers from the liver, Professor Strong felt it would be possible to take an adult liver, split it in half and give the smaller piece to a child. There were a great many people who thought it would never work. It was seen as expensive, risky and the ethics were hotly debated. One newspaper article even compared it to the monstrous work of Dr Josef Mengele, saying that such a transplant would produce ‘stunted children’. Professor Strong was under enormous pressure to succeed.
    While this storm of controversy was raging, his major concern lay with a minute detail that would have never occurred to anyone else. He was worried about what might happen after he joined the tiny blood vessels that allowed blood to run through the new liver. Over the years would these little stitches stretch and grow with the child? If they didn’t, it might mean that the baby would outgrow their liver and either die or need repeated transplants until they were an adult – a bit like needing a new pair of shoes every year. It was a complete unknown. As it turned out, everything was all right. Remarkably, the join-ups did stretch and life found a way. Australia’s first child liver transplant recipient is now in her late 20s and has two kids of her own. As a society, we owe a great deal to Russell Strongfor standing firm in the face of extreme opposition to do something he knew was right. I feel humbled that I now sit in an office next to his.
    Working alongside Professor Strong was Dr Daryl Wall. He was the person who took care of all the problems no one else could fix. These were broken and often institutionalised patients with volumes of hospital charts thicker than the phone book. Dr Wall was always charming and impeccably dressed in a suit and tie, even at three o’clock in the morning. Whenever I called him, he would answer with words of enthusiasm and praise for the job I was doing. His greatest gift was the ability to bring sunshine and optimism during the most desperate of times. It was likely he could find something life-affirming to say whilst amputating a leg during an earthquake. He also had the extraordinary skill of