Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Heart surgeon and writer, described as Britain's greatest, known for innovation and over 11,000 operations.
On the island
Eight records
I remember the shadows from my youth, my teenage years, and when the blast furnaces opened at night and the sky lit up all red. Sconthorpe was wonderful. I worked in the blast furnaces. I saw the steel bin poured and I thought as a young man that was wonderful. So wonderful land here's the shadows.
I used to listen to Cold Play in the Operating Theatre a lot... Viva La Vida was one that really set me off because I just was enjoying life. For me, being a heart surgeon wasn't onerous in any way.
it just reminds me of the transition between the back streets of Sconthorpe and the City of London and the Strand and Baker Street... What a different life it was once I'd got to medical school.
Forever AutumnFavourite
It takes me back to the time when... having made that discovery in Alabama... the scenery... Forever Autumn encapsulates that for me and it's so romantic.
Mike Oldfield (feat. Maggie Reilly)
I used to operate very frequently at night on emergencies... I used to walk out the back of the hospital and into the graveyard... So Moonlight Shadow kind of had a special significance for me.
That's what I did all my career... We went from being the smallest heart surgery centre in the country to the second largest... So go your own way is what I did.
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
Vladimir Ashkenazy, London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn
for me, so powerful, it kind of sums up my feelings about my career and what a struggle it all was, but coming out at the other end with very satisfying memories.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:04The human heart dancing. I mean, what a poetic metaphor, but what a nightmare to operate on. I mean, a real challenge. Was that part of the appeal for you too? The fact that it was so difficult?
When I first saw a heart, I was just totally mesmerized by its rhythm, its efficiency, the way one set of chambers contract and then the second set of chambers contract to pump the blood round the body into the lungs. It's a beautiful thing. The heart lung machine and something called cardioplegia, cold solution with potassium that that stops the heart in a flaccid condition is what allows us to oper operate with accuracy. So virtually every heart operation I did involved stopping the blood supply to the heart, putting in the cold fluid, watching it slow down, stop and collapse as it emptied. And then at the end when you repaired it, it would start up again, start contracting again, and usually if you'd done a good job with the repair, it would look totally different, transformed, and that was an enormous sense of satisfaction for me.
Presenter asks
3:49So, I mean, you found out later in life, Steve, that you have ADHD. I mean, looking back at your career, how do you think that played into your working life?
It made me impatient. And the combination of being able to operate quickly through the ambidexterity and the impatience that I had. I didn't want to spend all day on one case. I wanted to do three, four, five cases a day if I could. And I would just love children with A D D that have a label put on them to realize that it shouldn't hold you back. You should take it on and make the best of what you've got, because it'll probably turn out to be very successful.
The keepsakes
The book
William Harvey
There's a book that was written in 1628 called De Moto Cordis. It was written by William Harvey, the doctor who described the circulation of the blood for the first time. And it was rejigged in 1928. And I was given a copy of that book by one of my patients, a grateful patient, one day. And Harvey was made warden of Merton College in Oxford. So he did a lot of his work right where I live. So that's why the book's got special significance for me.
The luxury
a family photograph in a silver frame
So the whole of the family came and we had a beautiful picture taken and that that picture in its silver frame would be what I took off to the island.
Presenter asks
17:17So this is around the time, Steve, that you were offered a place to study medicine at Cambridge University. And despite it being your dream, you turned it down. Why?
Well, you know, I I remember trying to find the college that I was going to um uh for the interview, and I was walking along in Cambridge looking lost, and I walked past the Addenbrookes the old Addenbrookes hospital, and and a nurse came out coming off duty and and she said, Can I help you? You you're you're looking lost and I said, Well, I'm trying to find such and such a college. I've got an interview there and she said, I'm going that way. Let let me show you where it is. So we walked along and she said, Where are you from? and I thought to myself, if I say Sconthorpe, she'll laugh. Um because it was the butt of music ho hall jokes in the old days. So I said, Well, I'm from Lincoln. And she said, Oh, that's funny. I'm from Lincolnshire. I'm from such and such a village just outside Scunthorpe. And I I felt sort of two feet tall and um ... Seeing the dons riding their bikes on the way to the fancy dinners in the colleges in the evening, I thought, gosh, this is a wonderful place, but it's not me. So I went down to London. I had an interview in London, and in London they just selected people that they thought had aptitude and said if you just pass your three A levels, biology, chemistry and physics, you've got a place.
Presenter asks
23:12So Steve Westerby, in nineteen sixty seven, you suffered the severe head injury that would change your life. You were playing a rugby match and I think you tackled an opponent. Talk me through it. What actually happened?
Well, I I got a knee in my head, that's what I was told, because I I was out like a light, but I flopped down in a pool of water. And needless to say, a medical school rugby team is full of caring people. They what they cared about was scoring a try, so I was left face down, unconscious, in the water. And I didn't come round for quite some time. ... I was fearless after the frontal head injury. I lost inhibitions and I lost my shyness. I didn't lose any intellect. I just lost the inward looking inhibitions. And of course, becoming an extrovert with ambidexterity and everything, I was all set to become a heart surgeon. That was pretty perfect. So you constantly craved excitement? I did. I did, more or less. I simply didn't see fear or trepidation in major cases. And there they were destructive sides to the change in personality. I I m married after medical school a a very, uh very nice teacher who trained in Cambridge, who was at school with me in Sconthorpe. But after the personality change, I was completely different. So that was the end of marriage number one. I I felt terrible about that for the rest of my life. I had the most beautiful daughter who I'm very close to now, Gemma.
Presenter asks
37:19So talk to me about your mindset before because obviously there's a lot of pressure. There was only judged to be a thirty to fifty percent chance of success. You wanted obviously wanted Peter to be well and also wanted to prove that the technology could work. I mean, how did you prepare for the operation? How did you feel going into it?
It's back to the old um head injury, I j I just didn't have any fear about doing it. The fact that the device cost about a hundred and twenty thousand pounds I completely ignored. Of course, as you probably realize, the National Health Service would never take these devices on because there are as I've said, thousands and thousands of heart failure patients, and you can't pay one hundred and twenty thousand pounds for each one to make'em better. But I I d I didn't worry about um not succeeding.
“When I first saw a heart, I was just totally mesmerized by its rhythm, its efficiency, the way one set of chambers contract and then the second set of chambers contract to pump the blood round the body into the lungs. It's a beautiful thing.”
“I was fearless after the frontal head injury. I lost inhibitions and I lost my shyness. I didn't lose any intellect. I just lost the inward looking inhibitions.”
“I simply didn't see fear or trepidation in major cases.”
“I had a lot of ghosts in the end.”
“I used to walk out the back of the hospital and into the graveyard and simply sit up against a grave and look at the sky and look at the stars and think, well, hopefully they're on the way up there by now.”