At 17 I started a medical degree at the University of Melbourne. At that time the degree still had the traditional structure of three years of lectures at the University on the "science" of Medicine from Physics and Chemistry through Zoology and Anatomy to Pathology and Epidemiology and following that three years in hospitals learning the clinical aspects of Medicine: examining patients, "assisting" at surgery and delivering babies.

This structure suited me well as the first three years weren't that different from school, and I did pretty well with a moderate amount of study. I put my spare time and energy into involvement with the Medical Students Society, producing a number of their publications and involving myself in student politics to the point of being elected to the Melbourne University Student Council.

My heart wasn't really in the politics side of things. I saw student council as a means to obtaining funding for club activities and wasn't really into the whole debating-the-right-wrong-of-things part since as I saw it we were pretty powerless and if I worked out the numbers before-hand the meetings could be cut short. This infuriated some of the other committee members.

The really pleasureable aspect of the clinical years of Medicine for me was the division of the year into "groups" which went to rural hospitals and other rotations together. I liked the others in my group and still have some contact with almost all of them. There is a picture of us in the photo album from 1993.

By the end of Medicine I was ready for work and ready to earn some money. I was really looking forward to my intern year at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne. At the time (in fact from 1991 to 1997) I kept a daily journal and the entries from my first three days of work as an intern are quite a painful read. I started with just about the toughest job for a new intern: covering all the general medical patients in the hospital for most of the weekend. The combination of being inexperienced at making management decisions, being unused to 14-hour working days and not having good time-management skills made for a really unpleasant weekend.

By the end of my intern year I was pretty certain that I hated ward-work. There seemed to be an expectation that I would have some idea of what training program I would like to get into at this time but I hadn't really thought about it. I took on a second general year, thinking that radiology might suit me. The Clinical Dean I discussed my plans with seemed to think I would come around to the idea of training in Internal Medicine. I had done four weeks of anaesthesia in my intern year and on impulse I requested a three month rotation in my second year.

My second year started with Palliative Care which was a delightful job as it was quiet. It was followed by Haematology/Oncology which was an extremely busy medical job (subsequently split into two resident jobs) during which it was clear that I had become a lot better at managing a unit of 20 sick patients. I still didn't want to be a regular physician however.

In mid-1995 I finally had to deal with what I wanted to do with my life. I had become increasingly uneasy with the idea of radiology and had a very unhappy period of reflection deciding that none of the medical careers I had considered was really what I wanted to do, but I was getting too old (I thought) for another undergraduate degree. I decided that general practice might be the best, if unsatisfactory, choice. I signed up for another general year with a view to general practice.

In the last quarter of 1995 I finally started to get my life together: I was confident in my body after months of weight training, I had started dealing with my sexuality and at the same time realized during my three month anaesthesia rotation that I was really happy at work. Whether this was because my personal life was much more fulfilling or because the work suited me better I can't tell, but I started organizing to enter the anaesthesia training program in 1997.

1996 was a really enjoyable year. I had pretty quiet medical jobs including six months in Warrnambool, three hours drive from Melbourne, where I got some psychiatry and paediatrics experience and started learning to fight in a Muay Thai/freestyle karate school. Back in Melbourne I spent three months working for De Paul House and Turning Point Drug and Alcohol services learning a great deal about the full range of illicit drugs despite never having tried any of them (not even having smoked tobacco)

I was a trainee in the ANZCA program for five years from 1997. I spent my first year at the Geelong Hospital, second and fourth years at St Vincent's in Melbourne and third year at the Mercy Hospital for Women and the Royal Children's Hospital. It is quite a comprehensive training program in anaesthesia and I really enjoyed the vast majority of my work. I found it was fairly easy to work hard when it was work I enjoyed.

By the end of 2000 I had finished all the formal requirements for the FANZCA except for the requirement to complete five years. Rob Popovic, a guy I had worked with at St Vincent's, had just returned from two years working in San Francisco and Robert really wanted to go and live in San Francisco for a while. We both interviewed there in September 2000: he with tech companies and I at UCSF and we were lucky enough both to start work there in mid 2001.

Though I was still a trainee in Australia, I had completed more training than most Americans when they finished their anesthesia residencies, so UCSF employed me as "visiting faculty" (so I was teaching residents). I completed my time requirements for ANZCA in 2002 and received my fellowship. Working in the US was similar in a great many ways to Australia, but there were enough differences in anesthetic practice to provide an interesting education for me.

UCSF has a very busy neurosurgical service and I was asked on arrival if I was happy to do neurosurgical cases. One polite "yes" and I was neuroanesthesia faculty and so got a lot of experience with a wide range of asleep and awake neurosurgical cases. At the same time I had the opportunity to do some basic research in Pam Palmer's lab.

By the end of 2003 I wanted to return to Australia to fulfill my promise to work at St Vincent's again and also to see my grandparents who were becoming increasingly frail. I started work at as Staff Anaesthetist at St Vincent's in February 2004 and worked there full-time for three years doing a wide range of clinical anaesthesia including neuro and cardiac.

By the end of 2006 I was ready to reduce my public hospital commitment to half-time and enter private practice. After a somewhat rocky process of being “let go” by St Vincent’s and then offered a part-time position, I ended up with two public appointments, at St Vincent’s and the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital and joined a private group: Associated Anaesthetists.

I now spend roughly equal time on private and public hospital work, which is a situation I find offers the best balance of teaching and clinical work for my temperament.