June 24 Lowveld
Happy Father's Day!
Happy Father's Day!
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
shelter for the night. They laughed<br />
with me and cried with me. We<br />
experienced harrowing things<br />
involving war and all its ugliness. I<br />
learnt to pray under threat of death,<br />
and I learnt that politicians are a lying,<br />
deceiving lot. Up until then, I had no<br />
real political ideology. All I knew was<br />
that there was a worldwide battle<br />
going on between communism and<br />
capitalism, and by virtue of my birth, I<br />
had ended up on the capitalist side.”<br />
Eventually all of this ended, and Pieter<br />
reapplied for admission to med school.<br />
Those days having been a lieutenant<br />
and being part of a fighting unit in the<br />
SADF were seen as a sign of at least<br />
Pieter and his wife Karin<br />
some degree of grit, and with these<br />
bonus points Pieter was selected for<br />
medical studies. “To my amazement,<br />
I passed my first year at Tuks with a<br />
distinction,” he says. “It dawned on<br />
me that I might actually be able to<br />
make it! Commune life was wild and<br />
wonderful, but between the partying<br />
and swotting like a madman when<br />
needed, time flew by, and eventually I<br />
was a young, qualified doctor.”<br />
Working as a doctor in a public<br />
hospital is very similar to combat,<br />
Pieter explains, with lots of sights,<br />
sounds, smells, fear and desperation,<br />
and an all-pervasive sense of sadness.<br />
“I loved it, and realised I could do it<br />
well and make a huge difference in<br />
people’s lives,” he says. “The labour ward<br />
really overwhelms most med students<br />
when they enter it for the first time,<br />
but I thrived there despite the mindnumbing<br />
hours and the total physical<br />
exhaustion that comes from being on<br />
call for 36 hours.” Pieter got better and<br />
better at managing a busy labour unit,<br />
feeling at home in the gynaecology<br />
outpatients as well as doing theatre<br />
work. “Surgery was very challenging,”<br />
he adds, “but as time went on, I<br />
realised I had steady hands and<br />
could perform difficult procedures<br />
exceptionally well. Specialising was just<br />
the next logical step, and I took to it<br />
like a duck to water.”<br />
Pieter met his wife Karen in the busy<br />
labour ward in Kalafong Hospital, and<br />
says the minute he saw her, he knew<br />
they should get married and have<br />
children together. “It was a stormy<br />
affair, and after some pushing and<br />
shoving, we eventually settled down<br />
and realised we were meant to write<br />
our story together.” In 1995, after<br />
having graduated as a gynaecologist<br />
and Karen as a general practitioner,<br />
they decided to open a private<br />
consulting service in Nelspruit. “Karen<br />
and I worked like demons in those first<br />
few years,” says Pieter. “Permanently<br />
on call with lots of after-hours and<br />
weekend emergencies made for a<br />
stressful life, and it certainly took its toll<br />
on both of us. Somehow we managed<br />
to hold on and build something,<br />
including a home and a family with<br />
three boys.”<br />
<strong>June</strong> 20<strong>24</strong> Get It <strong>Lowveld</strong> 11