No Crying Allowed: The Journey from Farm Boy to Pediatric Cardiac Surgeon: a Collection of Essays and Memoirs

By Christopher J. Knott-Craig MD

From the Author of Lend Me a Kiss,The Weird Animal Club, and Bedtime Dinosaur Stories for Kids

 

From the time author Christopher J. Knott-Craig was fourteen years old, he wanted to be a heart surgeon. He had followed Professor Christiaan Barnard’s career and first heart transplant in December 1967, and he wanted to be like him and work for him. Knott-Craig started his cardiac surgery training in 1980, and about six months later, his professor suggested he try a different specialty. Undaunted, he begged for a second chance, which the professor reluctantly granted.

Through perseverance, hard work, and determination, Knott-Craig became an internationally recognized pediatric cardiac surgeon. In No Crying Allowed, with self-deprecating humor, he shares a collection of essays chronicling the trials and tribulations he experienced on his journey to following his dream to succeed.

 

Chris Knott-Craig has assembled an anthology of essays describing some of the challenges and triumphs he has experienced during his remarkable career as a pediatric heart surgeon.  Above all, the takeaway message is the importance of persistence in the face of what often appear to be insurmountable obstacles to a successful career in this daunting field of endeavor.

—Richard Jonas MD, President of the

American Association of Thoracic Surgeons

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Oct 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480863538

Christopher J. Knott-Craig MD

Christopher J. Knott-Craig, MD, is an internationally recognized pediatric cardiac surgeon who has done thousands of surgeries on babies and children from around the world. He is the author of several other books. Visit him online at www.chrisknottcraig.com.

Book preview

Copyright © 2018 Christopher J. Knott-Craig, Md.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6352-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6353-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018960306

Archway Publishing rev. date: 10/8/2018

Contents

Introduction

1 Farm Milk Is Very Different

2 The Sacrificial Lamb

3 The Railway-Track Adventure

4 The Bata Toughee’s Hike

5 The Bata Toughee’s Hike Revisited

6 The Montague Pass Survival Hike

7 Jewelry for My Mother

8 The First Ring I Bought

9 Sunday Lunch in the Bushveld

10 Cricket

11 Boot Camp in the South African Infantry

12 Confronting the Enemy

13 The Abdominal IV Catheter

14 My First Cardiac Operation—on a Pigeon

15 The Importance of Perseverance

16 Cardiac Trauma during a Barbecue

17 Simultaneous Cardiac Surgery on Two Brothers

18 Coming of Age in the Operating Room

19 The First Successful Neonatal Ebstein’s Repair

20 In the Presence of Excellence

21 Converting a Starnes’ Operation to a Biventricular Repair

22 The Berlin Heart

23 The History Lesson

24 The X-Ray Teaching Conference

25 My South African Accent Causing Trouble: Part 1

26 My South African Accent Causing Trouble: Part 2

27 Inauguration as a Fellow of American College of Surgeons

28 Come On, Wind; Make Me Strong

29 My First Marathon Was a Nightmare

30 Spiritually Based Utterances and Statements

31 Miracles in Medicine

32 The Miracle Coronary Bypass Operation

33 Now That Is What You Call Commitment

34 The Cardiac Surgery Christmas Party in 1987

35 These Facts, If True

36 Achievement Is Addictive

37 An Act of Civil Duty

38 Favorite African Proverbs

39 The Bushman Arrows

40 Hospital Care Is Different from Hospital Caring

41 Demonstrating Cardiac Surgery Can Be Disastrous

42 Tiredness Is a State of Mind—and Sleep Is Overrated

43 Parents’ Night Out

44 The Comfort Cloth and Cardiac Surgery

45 The Mexican Policeman

46 The Vulnerability of Vanity

To my darling children—Christopher, Mary-Ann, and Catherine—and for Connie and Danese, who have loved and supported me through all the trials and tribulations

Come on, wind; make me strong

(Challenging the headwind to blow stronger in order to build stamina while training for a marathon.)

Introduction

Most young people have dreams for themselves and for their lives before society systematically tries to persuade them that they are not good enough to achieve those dreams. I am no exception. From the age of fourteen, I wanted to be a cardiac surgeon. I entered medical school already wanting to be a cardiac surgeon. When I finally started training as a cardiac surgeon, I was quickly told that I was not good enough to succeed and that I needed to do something else. But I persevered with only my dreams and my dogged determination. This book is many things, but it is essentially a telling of that journey to realize my dreams. And, along the way, I share the self-deprecating humor, experiences, and renegade thinking that have resulted in the person I am today, leading to one of the top pediatric cardiac surgery programs in the world.

1

Farm Milk Is Very Different

It was warm and thick and creamy. It landed in a bucket that was positioned on the ground close to where the urine landed. And I was supposed to drink this—and be excited about it. You have got to be kidding me!

I was four years old and was on the farm with my grandparents (Ouma and Oupa, as we called them). At five thirty in the morning my brother, Alan, and I had to help milk the cows. We sat on stools and milked the teats, directing the milk into stainless steel buckets that stood precariously close to the back legs of the cow—and even closer to where the urine landed when the cow peed. When the udders were empty and the buckets were full, we carried the buckets to a shallow cement pond that looked like a cement baking pan and emptied the milk into it. A long pole centered in the pond slowly revolved, skimming the milk of the cream that was on top. This was used for making butter and cheese. But before the milk was skimmed, we used a pail to scoop out enough fresh, warm, creamy milk for breakfast. Everyone jostled to get the first glass of warm fresh milk. All except me, that is. For me, milk was supposed to come from a bottle in the fridge, not from the udder of a cow I knew by name.

I could not drink it. I could not even taste it. It disgusted me. Every morning I would pretend to be full and skip breakfast. Then I would tell the African kitchen lady in the Xhosa language, Ifuna isonka. Ifuna ibottor. Ifuna ineorbanob (I want bread with butter and honey). Xhosa is the language of the largest tribe in South Africa, the one to which Nelson Mandela belonged. Mandela grew up less than two hundred miles from my grandparents’ farm in Komga.

And so I faked drinking warm fresh milk. I faked it then, and I still cannot drink warm milk today. Milk should come from a bottle or a carton, not a cow! Everyone knows that, right?

2

The Sacrificial Lamb

There were sheep on my grandparents’ farm, where we spent most of our holidays. In fact, there were many sheep. My oupa (grandfather) used to take my brother Alan and me to the pastures to count them as they were herded through the gate from one field to another. I was amazed at how he could accurately count a hundred or more sheep so quickly.

Of course, there were also baby sheep, or lambs, on the farm. These lambs were often taken away from their mothers and brought to a little enclosed pasture behind the house. As young children (five to seven years old), we were tasked with feeding these lambs. We had baby bottles with baby teats. We filled the bottles with the fresh warm cow milk and fed the lambs like babies, cradling them in our arms or on our laps. We named them and called them by their names, and they would run up to us when we called them. And then the lambs grew up. What we did not know was that the lambs that had been singled out for us to nurse and feed with bottles had also been singled out for the Christmas feast six weeks later. One morning, usually a couple of days before Christmas, one of the farm laborers would lead a lamb (in this case, Betsie) to a place behind the farm shed. Unknowingly, Alan and I accompanied him on this trip one day. In a flash, he unsheathed a long knife and slit Betsie’s throat in a second. He hooked her up by the hind legs and suspended her from a tree limb so all the blood could drain out. I sniveled in the background, shocked and traumatized by this gruesome scene. But this was farm life for town boys. He then skinned the lamb and carved it up into manageable portions to be cooked for the Christmas feast.

I never had much of an appetite at those meals. I could still hear the bleating of the lamb that we had unknowingly raised to be the sacrificial lamb. One didn’t eat one’s pets, right?

Meat was supposed to come from the butcher shop, neatly wrapped in packages. Everybody knows that, right? Well, town kids know that!

3

The Railway-Track Adventure

Farm life for young boys was full of adventure. My older brother, Alan; Pop (a close friend who was a year older than Alan); and I were together each day from early morning till