Why I became a Gynaecologist by Naylin Appanna

March 15, 2015, no responses, by: Women Health Center, Tags:

I am constantly asked,” Naylin Appanna, what made you decide to become a gynaecologist. “

The answer is very simple really. I didn’t grow up wanting to become a gynaecologist. In fact I grew up wanting to become an airline pilot. Unfortunately in South Africa during the apartheid era, this was only the realm of people of european descent.

I initially became a doctor not because I had a dying wish to be a doctor but because it was the ‘prestigious’ thing to do in South Africa and I drifted along until my 4th year when I delivered my first baby. I knew there and then that this is what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my life. Nothing beats the reward of handing a baby to a mother for the first time. Nothing matches the look in the mothers eyes when she sees her baby for the first time. So yes Obstetrics was my first love.

But you can’t do Obstetrics without Gynaecology. So I went ahead and did my Obstetrician and Gynaecologist training. During my early years of training, surgeons started to make great advances in laparoscopic (keyhole) surgery and this became my second love. Having been a computer fanatic at a time when few people had even heard of the internet, I took to this like a duck to water. Hand, eye coordination, operating off a computer screen was not really a challenge and I have not looked back since.

I have been a specialist obgyn, in Hamilton, New Zealand since 1996. I stopped delivering babies a few years ago. I would still love to be delivering but you can’t control when they come. I was on call 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Everywhere we went we had to take 2 cars. When my wife went out, we had to have a babysitter sit with me, in case I got called out. And more often  than not I had been up till 4am only to have to work a full normal day the next day.  I officially gave up obstetrics 8 years ago, not without a fight from some patients who would not take no for an answer but have now got to a stage where I have not done a delivery for more than 4 years.

I now concentrate on Laparoscopic Gynaecology and it is very rewarding work, especially to see woman who walk into your office in so much pain and discomfort walk out a few weeks later, totally different woman.

So that is the story of how I, Naylin Appanna became a Gynaecologist.

www.obgyn.co.nz

www.endometriosisclinics.com

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