School Student
What's surgery like?
Dr Laurie Baxter
Associate Specialist - ENT
In 1968, my Grandfather was run over by an Allis-Chalmers tractor carrying a heavy load of sodden driftwood logs. It dragged him out into the ice floes of the Niagara River above Niagara Falls where my Grandmother found him barely conscious nearly an hour later. While our family was stunned by the horror of his injuries , my memories are of the surgeries that put this broken man back into the 6 foot 3 inch beloved GrandDad and much respected Chief of Oromaxillofacial Surgery at the University Hospital. He returned to work, then had a successful aortic pigvalve replacement before passing away as he neared 100.
I was studying to be a marine biologist; I became passionate about medicine. I had a ‘year off’ after my undergraduate degree at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. I was lucky enough to be accepted to medical school at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. My love affair with medicine began...and continues to this day.
In 1980, I moved to England with my American husband who had his own love affair with the UK. Our twin daughters were born in Cambridge in 1983; in 1985, we moved to Plymouth. My own ‘training’ was ongoing(still!), fractured, but never impossible. Becoming an SAS Doctor allowed me the flexibility I needed to be at home with the children particularly at night.
As the children grew, the flexibility of being an SAS ENT Surgeon afforded me freedom that many of my colleagues would never have. With the support of these colleagues and my hospital trust, I was fortunate enough to combine my fulltime ENT Associate Specialist post with 8 years as the governing body doctor for GB (Olympic) Diving. I travelled the ‘world’ with these talented elite athletes during the Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008 Olympic cycles, delighted to be able to facilitate and coordinate first class medical care.
The ragged pathway to my career in surgery is not one I would recommend but I have ‘played the hands I have been dealt’ with genuine enthusiasm...I love what I have been privileged to do. I am challenged by the very bright trainees, I am disciplined by the many committees I work with, I am enraged by matters involving child protection, I am humbled by patients in my clinics and I love to operate. It is all the art of medicine.
