awkward

recently i attended the association of south african surgeons congress. it's always strange and maybe fun for me to interact with surgeons. they are extremely interesting to me. i feel that i'm a bit of an outsider in the sense that i don't view myself as a typical surgeon, so i can sit back and observe, fooling myself that they are not looking at me in exactly the same way. but one thing about these congresses is that you get to see and rub shoulders with the heavyweights of the profession. it took me back many years to another congress that i attended when i was still a mere mortal registrar and truly was not yet one of them. the congress in question was in durban. at that stage i pretty much kept away from all the big names. it seemed the safer thing to do. however, one of my fellow registrars and a good friend of mine was quite friendly with the vascular prof, a greater than life man and a true legend in his own time in south africa. in fact my friend went on to specialize in vascular and is now himself a well known vascular surgeon in one of the big centers. so when my friend invited me to the vascular dinner the one night, i should have just said no. i didn't. the vascular dinner, as i was to discover, was a fairly exclusive affair. it was sponsored by one of the companies that supplied prosthetic grafts, mainly used for the repair of abdominal aorta aneurysms. all the big names were there, including our massive prof and the vascular prof from wits, who at the time w...
Source: other things amanzi - Category: Surgeons Authors: Source Type: blogs