‘MY QUEST TO FIND DOCTOR WHO SAVED MY LIFE IN 1960’
A WOMAN whose life was saved by a pioneering surgeon when she was 10 has tracked down his family – to thank them 58 years later.
Susan Payne, 68, set out to find relatives of the surgeon who repaired a hole in her heart at Sully Hospital when she was a schoolgirl.
But her only clue was a photo with the doctor’s name above her hospital bed.
Grandmother Susan turned detective – and appealed for relatives of Dr Dillwyn Thomas to come forward.
She was amazed to be contacted by the surgeon’s daughter, Margaret Hayley – and arranged to meet to thank her face-to-face for her dad’s work.
Susan said: “Here I am at 68 with two children and four grandchildren, and those generations would never have been if it wasn’t for that wonderful man.
“I’m incredibly lucky that wonderful surgeon was able to carry out that operation on me – and successfully.
“The big risk was brain damage, because they had to slow your metabolism down so much, your blood wasn’t flowing properly.
“I had the operation at the same time as a boy on my ward. He didn’t survive it – and I did. So it was really 50-50.”
Dr Thomas developed a technique using an ice bath to slow the heart which enabled him to operate.
Susan, of Newbridge-on-Wye, near Builth Wells, underwent the operation in May 1960 at Sully Hospital in the Vale of Glamorgan.
She was contacted on the phone by Mrs Hayley – and later met her in person to say thanks.
Dr Thomas qualified at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School in London in 1933, retired in 1972 and died in 1985, aged 77.
Mrs Hayley, said: “He was really quite a private man and so dedicated to his work – he was jolly tired and didn’t have much of a social life. If he was asked what he did for a living, he would say ‘a butcher.’”
She added that he would have been “absolutely amazed” that Susan was trying to track him down.
The pair shared a cup of tea and cakes as they discussed the pioneering operation which saved her life.
She said: “He lived for his patients and he would have been so pleased that she’s has such a happy life.”