Small Moments and Big Legacies
By Dr Emily Granger
You never forget some people. No matter how many lives I save or how many transplant surgeries I perform, there are special people and moments that will always live with me.
These moments drive me to new challenges and to build legacies that really matter for people and communities.
I’ve been a Heart Lung Transplant Surgeon for about 14 years and performed more than 300 transplants in my work at St Vincent’s Hospital but I still vividly recall my first transplant.
Essentially he was a man in his forties who had been fit and healthy, a small business owner but was struck down with a virus that had destroyed his heart muscle. He couldn’t exercise, he couldn’t run his business. His life was not only on hold…it was in danger. He was on the wait list for around six months and thankfully was given the opportunity of a new heart.
By the end of that year he was running again and even completed the Avon Descent – a renowned 40km kayak race.
To see the amazing transformation of this man’s life set me on the path to become a transplant surgeon.
People are forever thankful. I still recall a woman running after my car after a particularly tiring day. My husband slowed down to see if she was OK but she simply wanted to say thank you. I had performed a lung transplant on her after she had suffered for 30 years with pulmonary fibrosis. After the surgery, she was able to run and do simple things like helping out in the school canteen. Those moments make it all worth it.
Transplant surgery is a really rewarding area of medicine and surgery. The hours are long but the life changing benefits for patients are extraordinary.
For me, these stories stress the importance of organ donation and signing up to the Australian Organ Donor Register.
Each year I proudly promote Donate Life Week (25 July – August 1) to urge people to give that special gift of life. As my colleagues, I urge you to personally register and talk to your patients about the issue.
There are around 13 million Australians aged 16+ who are eligible to register as an organ and tissue donor – but haven’tWhile 9 in 10 Aussies support donation, only one in 3 are registered.
This year, Donate Life Week aims to get up to 100,000 more Australians to register as organ and tissue donors.
It’s really very simple to check if you’re registered or to become registered www.donatelife.gov.au/register and it only takes a minute
Most importantly Donate Life Week stresses the need to talk to our family and friends about our wishes.
I can’t emphasise the beauty of organ donation as the ultimate gift. You’re donating the opportunity of a new life for someone else.
It’s definitely a difficult conversation to have but imagine saving the life of someone waiting for a lung, when they have less than a year to live and then they get an organ donation that saves their life. The gift is extraordinary.
For me creating legacies is important and it’s part of the reason I’ve joined Healthscope and Northern Beaches Hospital.
I was drawn to Northern Beaches Hospital for the potential to be involved in establishing a new major teaching hospital and a leading cardiothoracic service.
I’m excited about a once in a lifetime opportunity to build a first class university hospital for a community that deserves the very best.
Northern Beaches Hospital will be an international leader in many fields. They’ve invested in great people including a large cohort of junior doctors to support the expanding specialist workforce, many of whom are leaders in their field. Northern Beaches is also a University teaching hospital with the onsite Clinical School training the doctors and specialist of the future.
They’ve also invested in excellent technology with an amazing state of the art theatre complex, including the Da Vinci robotics platform allowing the Beaches to perform robotic surgery including robotic cardiothoracic surgery. It will be the place to train the doctors of the future.
For the community of the Northern Beaches, this will be a local hospital they can be truly proud of and I’m really excited to help build the legacy.
Dr Emily Granger
Cardiothoracic / Heart and Lung Transplant Surgeon
Northern Beaches Hospital
Dr Granger has performed over 1400 general cardiothoracic operations and over 300 heart and lung transplants.
She joined Healthscope’s Northern Beaches Hospital in 2021 and was recently involved in a lifesaving operation to repair a ruptured aorta. The team effort attracted national media attention. Read more
Dr Granger completed her medical degree at the University of Queensland in 1997 and her surgical Fellowship with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons in 2006. She has been involved with the NSW Organ Tissue Donation Service and Deceased Donor Organ Procurement Surgeon Committee since 2007. In July 2014, she was involved in the world’s first successful “DCD” heart transplant and since this time, the Heart Transplant Unit at St Vincent’s Hospital have performed a further 22 “DCD” heart transplants.
She is a conjoint lecturer with the Clinical Medical School at St Vincent’s Hospital and the University of Notre Dame and is active in the teaching of medical students, junior doctors and trainee surgeons. She is an EMST and CCRISP instructor with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) and involved with the NSW RACS State Regional Committee as the Cardiothoracic Surgery Representative. In 2017, she was appointed to the Board of Cardiothoracic Surgical Examiners.
Her areas of interest include adult cardiac and thoracic surgery, minimal access cardiac surgery for the aortic and mitral valve, heart lung transplantation and ECMO.