How to Do a Liver Transplant by Kellee Slater Page B

of the time. I even carried my pager when I went to the toilet. These surgeons did not care how long I had been awake and I was certainly not going to complain about it because invariably they had been working many more hours than me. I really wanted to do my job well and impress them because even if I could become a fraction of the surgeons they were, I could hold my head up high. My daily routine became one of complete unpredictability, and being someone who likes a plan, I still struggle with this now. At any time, day or night, I could receive a call letting me know there was going to be a transplant and suddenly the next 24 hours of my life would be occupied.
    Cruelly, the most common time to be called was late in the afternoon, just as the sun was setting and there was a glimmer of hope that I might be finishing work for the day. Intensive Care rounds were done in the morning and the patients who were more than critically ill, i.e. dead, were deemed to be that way shortly after. By the time the deceased’s family gave their consent to donate the organs and all the tests were done, it was often late in the day. Only then could things get underway and a donor teamfrom the PA be dispatched to retrieve the organs from as far afield as the Northern Territory or even New Zealand. At the same time, the lucky person who was to receive a donated organ would be summoned by the urgent bleat of their pager. When they heard that sound, they had to drop everything, pack a bag and dash straight to the hospital. Once there, they waited on tenterhooks to hear whether or not the organ they had been counting on to save their life was going to be usable. When the word came through from the donor team that the organ was good, the recipient would tearfully kiss their family goodbye and be wheeled around to the operating theatre to begin what might be a rocky road to recovery.
    My little contribution to the whole proceeding was to greet these excited and anxious recipients when they arrived at the hospital and to congratulate them on this first big step toward a new life. I also had to remind them of the grim reality that they had a one in a hundred chance of not being alive tomorrow.
    About 9 pm, when most people were getting ready to settle into their beds for the night, I would be standing at the scrub sink washing my hands for what would be six to eight hours of standing perfectly still while an old liver was exchanged for a new one. I would be at the left elbow of the transplant surgeon and we would be accompanied by three of the overseas surgeons on the other side of the operating table, all jostling for the best vantage point. With ourmasked faces only centimetres from each other, we would all work together to remove the patient’s old liver, moving perfectly through a set of carefully choreographed manoeuvres. Professor Strong would usually operate in complete silence for the duration of the transplant. The only sounds in the room were the ping of the patient’s heart monitor and the slurp of the blood going up the suckers. The overseas doctors frequently spoke next to no English but occasionally the silence would be punctuated by one of them letting out a grunt of approval as Professor Strong put in a stitch they particularly liked.
    I stood amongst them as the most inexperienced person in the room, desperately hoping no one would notice that quite often I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing. There was no instruction forthcoming and because I didn’t want to bother anyone with stupid questions, I just had to figure out what to do by paying close attention. Occasionally Professor Strong would move my hand to where he wanted it and I would will my fingers to perform with some semblance of coordination and do whatever he asked. If I was lucky, this involved cutting a stitch or holding a thread as fine as a human hair, releasing it at just the right moment so it didn’t break. If I did snap it, Professor would