KOLKATA: A day before her wedding, surgeon Priyanka Saha lived out a dream that she had nurtured for years — conducting an operation with her father, Makhanlal Saha, also a surgeon and a former head of surgery at SSKM Hospital. The duo conducted a complicated operation at a south Kolkata nursing home on Friday. They joined hands to remove a mammoth tumour, weighing 10 kilos, from a patient’s abdomen. While Saha retired form SSKM a few months ago, his daughter is undergoing a superspecialist course on oncosurgery after completing her post-graduation in general surgery.
This was Priyanka’s first major surgery. On Saturday night, Priyanka decked up as a bride had all the reasons to smile. Conducting a surgery with her father was a dream come true, she said. She, in fact, visited the nursing home to check on the patient on Saturday, hours before rushing into a star hotel for the wedding.
“My daughter is super excited and I am happy that she was with me while we conducted the life-saving surgery. The patient is recovering very well,” said senior Saha.
The patient, a 45-year-old musician, was admitted at Lions Hospital in Ranikuthi a few days ago under surgeon Dipankar Sarkar for removing a tumour called retroperitoneal sarcoma. As the surgery was a major one, Sarkar roped in Saha as the latter had helped him in conducting complicated surgeries earlier.
Priyanka had done her MBBS from Midanpore Medical College before she went to Mumbai to pursue post-graduation in general surgery, her father’s specialty. She is now undergoing post-doctoral degree in onco-surgery from AIIMS Bhubaneshwar and had come back home for her wedding.
When she heard her father discussing about the surgery, the qualified surgeon did not want to let go of an opportunity to conduct a surgery with his father.
On Friday morning, she went to the Ranikuthi hospital with her father and conducted the surgery while anesthesiologist Paramita and others also contributed.
