Foundation Day Address 2025

It’s great to be back…again!

Thank you for the opportunity to address the school on the Foundation Day Assembly. This is an important time for Brisbane Girls Grammar School, a celebration of a ‘radical experiment’, a vision to establish a secondary school for girls to have access to the same, if not, a better education than boys. It is also a celebration of determination, perseverance, endurance and the belief that girls can do anything, with hard work. Nil sine Labore.

This is a week that celebrates the story of the School. I finished Year 12 at BGGS in 1991. I also love a good story, so today I would like to tell a story from my life as a Cardiothoracic Transplant Surgeon at St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney.

In Australia there are only four Transplant units: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia. St Vincent’s Hospital is the biggest transplant unit in Australia, performing about 100 heart and 80 lung transplants every year. St Vincents is the fourth biggest heart transplant unit in the world. Since our first heart transplant in 1968, we have performed over 1000 heart transplants, pioneering the world first Donation after Cardiac Death heart transplant in 2014. That’s entirely another story for another day! There are five surgeons who perform the transplants at St Vincent’s Hospital—I am one of them. In Australia and New Zealand there are 235 active Cardiothoracic Surgeons, 19 are female.

Today, I would like to tell you the story of one of our recent heart transplant recipients. The story is tragic yet inspiring, crazy but true, impossible yet somehow made real. The story involves people who have spent their lives daring to dream, researching new techniques and technology even when the doubters questioned everything. There are many people on the transplant team at my hospital, and I want to emphasise that the transplant journey is impossible without their hard work and teamwork. Everyone has a desire to make a difference in the world and maybe, possibly, save a life.

So, let’s go. Let’s do it. Let’s do a heart transplant.

We start with a girl, not too different to everyone sitting here today in the auditorium. She’s 15, plays Netball for her school, loves Debating, reads every book she can get a hold of and has an older sister. She also has no idea that she carries a genetic mutation that leads to heart failure at a young age. One day her sister has a cardiac arrest in the city, waiting for a bus home from university. Someone starts CPR immediately, an ambulance rushes her to hospital where they try everything to restart the heart, but they can’t. She passes away. The doctors diagnose Familial Dilated Cardiomyopathy. This condition results in the heart muscle becoming thin and weakened. Patients develop extreme tiredness, the legs and feet swell, and they eventually develop an irregular heartbeat, leading to very low blood pressure and fainting episodes; whereas before they have warm hands and pink cheeks, the patient turns bluish and their hands and feet cold. The person may even die, suddenly. Treatment is limited, medications can improve symptoms for a short while, but a heart transplant is essential.

So how do I, a Grammar girl, alumnae 1991, from Griffith House, Year 8 home room W23, fit into all of this? How does a Grammar girl become a heart surgeon, a transplant surgeon at that? It probably started in E block; Biology classes, dissecting a toad, Chemistry classes with those unpredictable Bunsen Burners, Maths, English, Physics. Girls Grammar encouraged us to question, enquire, think outside the box, ask if what currently was accepted was really the best way, and could we do things better? What would a leader do in this discipline, and why can’t that leader be a female? Girls could do anything, if they had the skill, determination and dedication. Our motto: dare to dream, be bold, conquer the world if needs be!

But back to our 15-year-old girl. Doctors scan her heart, its already big, and the heart’s function is not normal, and deteriorating fast. She is admitted to St Vincent’s Hospital for a transplant ‘work up’. She goes on our heart transplant waitlist immediately.

What happens when you are waiting for a transplant? The average wait for a donor heart is about 150 days. The donor heart must be matched according to size, and blood group, with a good X match (or immune match).

What does our 15-year-old girl do? She goes back to school of course! Netball is now out of the question, but Debating is fine, and the walk is slow between classrooms. Then one day, in Maths, she faints. By the way, did I tell you she was unlucky, but lucky? The class had just completed their Bronze Medallion course. She turned blue, she wasn’t breathing, she had no pulse. Her friends started CPR, and her internal defibrillator kicked in. She turned pink and woke up, with a sore chest. Unlucky, but so lucky! So, it was off to St Vincent’s Hospital for further assessment.

One of the options we have as Heart Transplant Surgeons is to stitch in a mechanical heart, an artificial heart. The pump is about the size of your palm and can stay attached to your heart for several years, you just need a power cord to exit your skin, just like a vacuum cleaner cord! The pumps have batteries that last six to eight hours, and patients carry them in a ‘fishing jacket’, or handbag.

At St Vincent’s Hospital we recommended a Ventricular Assist Device (a mechanical artificial heart) to keep her alive until we could get a suitable donor heart. It is open heart surgery, a four hour operation. She was brave and decided to go ahead with the surgery. Needless to say, she flew. With the pump attached to her heart she finally had the energy to do things she had to give up. Everything except Netball!

Back to school, batteries in the blazer pocket, waiting, waiting for a donor. According to her parents she was extremely popular for emergency phone recharging using her heart pump batteries, which were super-fast.

A donor heart becomes available. As the surgeon on call for transplant, I call in the team. My team consists of 10 (two anaesthetists, three surgeons, three nurses, two perfusionists). As the retrieval team sets out to procure the donor organs interstate, and we get started at St Vincent’s Hospital. The surgery is complex.

The heart arrives in theatre, we take it out of the box. Five stitched circles later the heart is in, and clamps are released. Another hour to let the new heart settle in, and finally six hours after the start of the case, she has a pulse again; she is pink, her hands and feet are warm, and her blood pressure is normal. By the next morning the Intensive Care Unit has her awake and breathing on her own. By lunch she is hugging her family. By dinner she is texting her school friends. After two weeks in hospital the girl goes home, and by six weeks she is back at school.

This is one of my many stories. What I get to do every week at St Vincent’s Hospital is amazing, almost unbelievable. It is a privilege to be able to change someone’s life, to give someone the chance at new life. From great tragedy comes hope, a second chance for a lucky patient. Unlucky to have heart failure, lucky to get a new one. What I do however, is only possible because of the wonderful hospital and health system that has developed over time, over 150 years. A hospital dedicated to service, a hospital that believes in teaching, education, research, being a leader and pioneer. A hospital that recognises ability, hard work and dedication.

Brisbane Girls Grammar School is the same. There are possibilities, opportunities, support systems, mentors, coaches, and facilities available for you at Brisbane Girls Grammar School. It is up to you to make the most of what is here to chase your dreams, develop your potential, start your own story. Whilst the journey is never easy, and frequently you will take a few alternate pathways that may not ‘work out’, the story is there, waiting for you to take the first steps.

Thank you again for the opportunity to speak on Foundation Day here at BGGS. Good luck to the students with their studies and pursuits. I am sure the story that you will write will be amazing. There are many pathways ahead, it is up to you to choose. Sometimes the path will be rocky, less obvious, maybe even impossible, but it will be your path and yours to make the most.