Superman surgeon who cycles to the rescue day and night — and even buys patients wine!
DO YOU know a health hero? The Daily Mail, in partnership with Boots and ITV’s This Morning, is asking you to nominate special people in the health-care sector who have made a real difference to your life or a loved one’s. To nominate your health hero, fi
AS SHE arrived outside A&E at 11pm on a Sunday night, Hoda Mansour was understandably scared. Ten days before, her 75-yearold husband Eli had undergone a major operation on his jaw — and now the wound had started leaking. Frightened, Hoda had called the surgeon on his mobile, and he’d told her to get her husband straight to hospital.
But as Hoda got out of the taxi at A&E, her fears melted away. There to greet them, clad in cycling shorts and with a huge grin on his face despite the driving rain and late hour, was Graham Smith, the surgeon himself.
He’d cycled from his home seven-anda-half miles away, and was waiting for the couple in the cold with a wheelchair ready to take Eli to the specialist ward at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London. The consultant maxillofacial surgeon gently lifted Eli into the chair, took the suitcase from Hoda’s hands, and led the couple up to the ward.
He stayed at Eli’s bedside for two hours, carefully cleaning the wound and even changing the dressing himself. ‘I couldn’t believe it,’ says Hoda, 75, a former journalist from Lebanon. ‘I’ve been in Britain for 40 years, but never met a doctor who is so kind and runs around like that for his patients. You’d expect someone of his l evel to get somebody else to do it for him. He really is an angel.’
Mr Smith only left once he was satisfied Eli was comfortable for the night — it was 1am when he got back on his bike to cycle home.
This is just one of many examples of the extra mile this modest surgeon goes for his patients. Eli was in hospital for nearly a month and Mr Smith visited him ‘every single day’, says Hoda.
‘Even at weekends he’d come from home to see him, sometimes twice. One Sunday he was on his way home from church with his young daughter, and he still came to hospital with her especially to see Eli. He changed hi s dressing every time — even though you might expect a more junior person to.’
OncE, when Eli revealed he was missing his daily glass of wine, Mr Smith bought two small bottles of red, popped them into a pharmacy bag and put them by his patient’s bedside.
‘He said: “These are for you to enjoy when you’re well enough,” ’ Hoda l aughs at the memory. ‘We’ve still got them at home, waiting to be drunk. It gave Eli a bit of hope, and I can’t imagine any other doctor would think of doing that.’
And when Eli was finally home, in pain and losing weight because he was struggling to eat, he was never far from his doctor’s mind.
‘Mr Smith would call or text numerous times a week to ask how he is, how he’s feeling, what he’s eating.’ As Hoda notes, she’s never known another doctor to phone her up at home just to ask after her husband’s welfare.
‘Twice I called him at 11pm because Eli was suffering so much. Mr Smith offered to come round to the house. I didn’t want to put him out, but when he explained the pain is normal and advised us on pain relief, it really eased Eli’s discomfort. I always feel calm when I see him and I see Eli getting better just from talking to him.’
A few weeks ago, she told the surgeon her husband still couldn’t eat many foods. Two days later a package arrived on her doorstep — ‘ Mr Smith had spoken to a dietitian and posted some special recipe books, along with a personal note. It was so kind.’
It’s this thoughtful nature and willingness to go out of his way to make sure his patient is all right that makes him a real hero, she says, and is why she is nominating him for the Daily Mail Health Hero awards. Another woman who knows only too well how hard Mr Smith, 45, works for his patients is Kathy Wheeler. Indeed, she was so touched by the dedicated and compassionate way the surgeon cared for her husband, John, she later went to work for him.
Kathy first met Mr Smith seven years ago when her husband, then 59, was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue and neck.
John, who worked in IT, underwent a 12-hour operation to remove the tumours and have his tongue reconstructed; he was also given a tracheostomy — where a tube is inserted into the windpipe to help with breathing.
He spent the next three months in hospital. ‘It was a worrying time, but Mr Smith popped in to see my husband at least once, sometimes twice, a day. And he’s good at thinking about the little things — when John was moved to intensive care, Mr Smith suggested I bring in photos and his favourite music to make him feel comfortable,’ says Kathy. Any time the couple needed him, they could call the surgeon on his mobile. ‘He’s brilliant with patients, so caring. But more than anything, he saved my husband’s life with this complex operation and we were so grateful.’ A couple of years later, she bumped into Mr Smith in a hospital car park — Kathy works as a medical secretary, managing the practices of several doctors — and he asked her if she was available for work.
‘The fact is, I wasn’t looking for extra work at the time as my husband still wasn’t well. I’d already turned other potential employers down,’ she says.
‘But, as my two daughters said: “Look at what he did for Dad. You have to work for him.” And so I did,’ recalls Kathy, now 63.
John went into remission, but died i n 2011 f rom another, unconnected, cancer in his lung. Mr Smith, along with the other doctors she works for, gave a generous donation to Marie curie cancer care.
‘He brings a human element to his care, making a difficult situation a less frightening experience. There can be a perception of surgeons as perhaps being standoffish,’ says Kathy. ‘That’s certainly not true of him.
‘His patients are always telling me: “Oh we love Mr Smith.” He’s so cheerful and smiley all the time, which lifts people’s spirits. He just has this air about him that makes you feel everything will be all right.’ What makes Mr Smith’s considerate nature more remarkable is his workload. As well as working a full week, he is a handson father of four (his wife, Lucy, is a former anaesthetist), and is currently spending a fortnight of his annual leave in Ethiopia, where, with other medics from Britain, he helps rebuild people whose faces have been deformed by machete injuries, infections, and even hyena bites.
This is the third year running that he has done this with Project Harar Ethiopia, and he pays all his flight and other costs out of his own pocket.
Mr SMITH has form with these kinds of lifetransforming missions. In 2009, he made headlines when he removed a large tumour from the face of threeyear-old Iraqi Saif Basim, whom he’d met on a teaching trip to Baghdad. The high-risk surgery was carried out at St George’s.
‘I just really enjoy operating and helping people, but travelling, too. This way I can combine everything,’ he explains modestly.
He is also a great believer in a hands-on approach and a good bedside manner.
‘Gone are the days of doctors being aloof — there shouldn’t be that division between what doctors and nurses do,’ he says.
It’s an attitude that resonates with personal experience.
Two-and-a-half years ago his mother was diagnosed with kidney cancer and died within three months. Mr Smith admits her care was somewhat ‘hit and miss’.
‘Some people were excellent, but the holistic care wasn’t always there. On one occasion
my father told a nurse my mother was in lots of pain, but the nurse was busy doing paperwork, so she had t o wait a l ong t i me f or drugs. A patient-centred approach is so important.’
And Mr Smith firmly believes in extending his care to that of his patients’ loved ones, too.
‘ Seeing what my f ather went through really brought home what these poor families experience. I’ve always taken the attitude that I must treat someone the way I’d want my mum, dad or wife to be treated.’
For Hoda Mansour, Kathy Wheeler and many other patients and their families, that’s what makes him special.