money; I would never have let it go. So, we got a loan and extended the limit on our credit cards and tried not to worry.
As luck would have it, the moment our feet touched US soil, the Australian dollar plummeted below 50 US cents and we found ourselves in a financial mess. Buying a pizza for dinner worked out at roughly 40 Australian dollars.After the first year in Denver, it looked pretty unlikely that Andrew and I would be able to keep our heads above water. Fortunately, I had worked hard enough to prove that I was a valuable member of the department and Dr Kam found a salary for me. This allowed us to stay an extra year and I am so grateful to him and the other surgeons in Denver who helped me out.
Two younger surgeons worked alongside Dr Kam and rounded out the team in Denver: Dr Tom Bak, a laidback local graduate trained by Dr Kam; and Dr Michael Wachs, a graduate of Harvard Medical School who did his transplant training in San Francisco under the formidable transplant surgeon Dr Nancy Asher. She was legendary in transplant circles and was one of only a handful of female transplant surgeon role models. I had heard the stories of her scrubbing out of surgery in the middle of a case to breastfeed her baby who was waiting with a nanny in the room next door. I also heard that she once handed her baby to Thomas Starzl to hold when she had to deliver an important lecture at an international meeting. This is what I wanted to be like, combining surgery and motherhood. I knew it could be done.
These three men between them were doing more than 60 liver transplants, along with 150 kidney and ten pancreas transplants each year. In addition, there were the dozens of middle-of-the-night donor surgeries that kept them working very long hours indeed. Because of thesporadic nature of transplants, there were times when they didnât sleep for days and then there were weeks when there was ample time for a round of golf each afternoon. I was to be the first Fellow to work for them in some years and these guys were not used to having the encumbrance of someone like me who still had her training wheels firmly in place. All the surgery they did was on their own terms; there was no one to blame for any problems but themselves. Teaching junior staff adds an extra level of stress and takes a lot of effort. Not only does it slow things down, but, as I have found out now that I am a teacher, there is the deep anxiety of watching a trainee surgeon fluff around, sometimes making an operation far more difficult than it needs to be. My arrival suddenly thrust them all into this situation. It was my job to earn their trust by doing all the essential but less than glamorous tasks like ward work, donors and weekend rounds, so I could prove it was worth their time to teach me.
Andrew and I arrived in Denver in July, the middle of the US summer, the customary time to start a new job in the States. We were met at the airport by Jane Biglin, the office manager of the transplant unit and the only person we had been in contact with. Via about a hundred emails, Jane and I had managed to arrange my new life. Aside from a quick visit to Colorado about three months before, where I briefly met my future mentors, I hadnât actually spoken at length to anyone in my new place of employment.
Over the internet we had agreed to rent a basement apartment in the cosy home of a former transplant nurse called Ann Kirby. Ann was an adventurous Irishwoman who had backpacked all over the world. When she arrived in Denver she had fallen in love with the mountains and the people and had made her life there. We became friends with Ann right from the start probably because we had the mutual bond of living far from our original homes. Her experience of settling into a new country made our transition just that little bit easier.
For us sun-loving Australians, our new subterranean apartment took a great deal of getting used to. A common feature in American homes, these
As luck would have it, the moment our feet touched US soil, the Australian dollar plummeted below 50 US cents and we found ourselves in a financial mess. Buying a pizza for dinner worked out at roughly 40 Australian dollars.After the first year in Denver, it looked pretty unlikely that Andrew and I would be able to keep our heads above water. Fortunately, I had worked hard enough to prove that I was a valuable member of the department and Dr Kam found a salary for me. This allowed us to stay an extra year and I am so grateful to him and the other surgeons in Denver who helped me out.
Two younger surgeons worked alongside Dr Kam and rounded out the team in Denver: Dr Tom Bak, a laidback local graduate trained by Dr Kam; and Dr Michael Wachs, a graduate of Harvard Medical School who did his transplant training in San Francisco under the formidable transplant surgeon Dr Nancy Asher. She was legendary in transplant circles and was one of only a handful of female transplant surgeon role models. I had heard the stories of her scrubbing out of surgery in the middle of a case to breastfeed her baby who was waiting with a nanny in the room next door. I also heard that she once handed her baby to Thomas Starzl to hold when she had to deliver an important lecture at an international meeting. This is what I wanted to be like, combining surgery and motherhood. I knew it could be done.
These three men between them were doing more than 60 liver transplants, along with 150 kidney and ten pancreas transplants each year. In addition, there were the dozens of middle-of-the-night donor surgeries that kept them working very long hours indeed. Because of thesporadic nature of transplants, there were times when they didnât sleep for days and then there were weeks when there was ample time for a round of golf each afternoon. I was to be the first Fellow to work for them in some years and these guys were not used to having the encumbrance of someone like me who still had her training wheels firmly in place. All the surgery they did was on their own terms; there was no one to blame for any problems but themselves. Teaching junior staff adds an extra level of stress and takes a lot of effort. Not only does it slow things down, but, as I have found out now that I am a teacher, there is the deep anxiety of watching a trainee surgeon fluff around, sometimes making an operation far more difficult than it needs to be. My arrival suddenly thrust them all into this situation. It was my job to earn their trust by doing all the essential but less than glamorous tasks like ward work, donors and weekend rounds, so I could prove it was worth their time to teach me.
Andrew and I arrived in Denver in July, the middle of the US summer, the customary time to start a new job in the States. We were met at the airport by Jane Biglin, the office manager of the transplant unit and the only person we had been in contact with. Via about a hundred emails, Jane and I had managed to arrange my new life. Aside from a quick visit to Colorado about three months before, where I briefly met my future mentors, I hadnât actually spoken at length to anyone in my new place of employment.
Over the internet we had agreed to rent a basement apartment in the cosy home of a former transplant nurse called Ann Kirby. Ann was an adventurous Irishwoman who had backpacked all over the world. When she arrived in Denver she had fallen in love with the mountains and the people and had made her life there. We became friends with Ann right from the start probably because we had the mutual bond of living far from our original homes. Her experience of settling into a new country made our transition just that little bit easier.
For us sun-loving Australians, our new subterranean apartment took a great deal of getting used to. A common feature in American homes, these
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