How to Do a Liver Transplant by Kellee Slater Page A

remembering and using the name of everyone he had ever met, from the cleaner to the CEO of the hospital, and everyone loved him because of it. An imaginary Dr Wall still sits on my shoulder when I am operating, guiding my hands, his surgical aphorisms sounding in my head. There is no doubt that my love for looking after complicated problems has come from him.
    Professor Stephen Lynch, better known as ‘the Chairman’ for his skill in negotiating both the operating room and the maze of hospital administration, originally hailed from New South Wales. He joined Professor Strong in the earliest days of the liver transplant program at the PA andwas by his side through all of the exciting ‘firsts’. By the time I started there, he was the Director of the Liver Transplant Unit. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was the man who would eventually change the course of my life. Professor Lynch was a quick and precise surgeon and watching him operate was like poetry in motion.
    Finally, there was Professor Jonathan Fawcett, the newest member of the group. He was a young British surgeon, headhunted by the PA for his amazing research pedigree and giant intellect. There was literally nothing he didn’t know and he would be my ‘phone a friend’ if I ever went on the TV show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? He combined being a brilliant surgeon and dedicated researcher with the likeability of British comedian Hugh Grant. I would never have believed that we would one day become the best of friends and that I would think nothing of picking up the phone and calling him for a chat four times a day.
    These awe-inspiring men aside, being a transplant registrar was a terrifying job because it was just so different to any other type of surgery I had ever done. These were long, bloody operations performed on critically ill patients who took unfamiliar medications and got bizarre infections. The catch cry in the transplant ward was ‘All bets are off’, meaning just when you think it couldn’t happen to these people – it did. Transplant medicine is a high stakes business and I was constantly worried about making anerror that could cost someone their liver and ultimately their life. That feeling never goes away, even now.
    Then there was the mystique that surrounded where all these spare livers and kidneys came from. It was not unusual to arrive at work in the morning and find out that a donor team had slipped out unnoticed during the night, flying to another city to retrieve organs from someone recently departed. It was always discussed in hushed tones because the secrecy regarding the origins of transplant organs was paramount in order to protect the privacy of the donor families. We would all cringe when a high profile person received a transplant because it got a lot of coverage in the press, giving a donor family the opportunity to put two and two together and figure out where their relative’s donated organ went. Of course on my first day I wasn’t really aware of this reverence for donors and made my first of many transplant faux pas.
    â€˜Would it be possible for me to go on a harvest?’ I asked, meaning, ‘Could I attend a donor operation someday?’ I received a quick and venomous rebuke from the crotchety transplant coordinator.
    â€˜We try not to use the word “harvest”, my dear,’ she said. ‘The families don’t like it, it sounds like we are plundering the corpse. Procurement is the politically correct term. You see, we have to show respect for the dead. Only laymen use the word harvest,’ she explained condescendingly. Of course, she made sure to deliver this dressing-down infront of several of my new transplant bosses. I was red-faced with embarrassment at my gaffe, but thankfully they just ignored me.
    The transplant job was crazy – on call 24/7 for six months. The patients were unbelievably complex and needed all of my attention all