Robert Sells

I’m really disappointed not to be at the reunion, and I’m sure it will be enjoyable and moving. Like Ann Chamberlain, I’m a bit of an interloper, having sneaked into the ’61 cadre with an unexpected success in a pre-emptive attempt at the Conjoint.

From the start at Guy’s I had much less interest in medicine than in music. There were some very good performers then: John Winter, Tom Sherwood, and (the late) Mike French. The Chapel was a good auditorium, and we did several oratorios in Southwark Cathedral and The Chapter-House. The artist Mel Dean drew me from behind (my best aspect), conducting GHMC in The Creation.

After qualifying I was Butterfield’s HP. The 1962 Consultants’ Dinner was memorable: David Barker and I were editors of the Guy’s Gazette, and he had become cynical about the ethics of private practice at Guy’s. As President, I asked him to reply to the Guy’s toast on behalf of the Residents. Butterfield, plainly concerned that David might ruin his career with an immoderate speech, sent a note: “Barker, be careful”. The note was sent back: “Butterfield, f*** off!” David’s speech was sharply critical, but did him no material harm. The other thing that happened that night, after the consultants left, was a spectacular drunken riot causing the near-destruction of the College. To raise the £1,500 repair bill, we organised the first Ball at the newly-opened Hilton Hotel. Such extraordinary events illustrate the strange relationship which we had with our mentors and our Institution. I believe our complicity was somehow demanded, in perpetuating the traditions, the inbreeding, the institutionalisation of our alma mater. Yet an induced sense of loyalty to Guy’s persists into middle age, atavistic but special.

John B, (despite a dangerous representation of him by me in Tony Bron’s brilliant Residents’ Play) put me into Harry Keen’s lab and I became interested in type 1 diabetics. My first research paper (Diabetologia. 1;1. (1964)) was co-authored with Harry and John Jarrett and involved culturing individual islets of Langerhans. Thus I learned how to operate, and my peers encouraged me to think. Surgery seemed the right path. After training in transplantation with Frank Ellis and Stewart Cameron at Guy’s, Roy Calne at Cambridge and Francis Moore at Harvard, I was appointed to set up the Mersey Regional Transplant Unit in 1971.

Success came gradually in a field where the early results were so dire. Diabetics in particular have a higher risk of death due to coronary thrombosis and postural hypotension following a kidney graft. In very high-risk, young, diabetics, we turned to simultaneous pancreas and kidney transplants as a way of stabilising the blood sugar during the dangerous post-operative period. Initially ridiculed by the physicians as surgical exhibitionism, this complicated procedure in our hands turned out to be life-saving and life-enhancing in selected patients.

My retired state now allows much more music – I have been conducting the Crosby Symphony Orchestra for 29 years - and have formed a semi-professional madrigal choir in the Vale of Clwyd. I remain interested in bio-ethical aspects of transplantation, but although I was President of the British Transplantation Society, attending meetings to introduce speakers makes me feel like a ghost at the feast.

Life on our small-holding in the Vale is perfect. Paula breeds horses and I raise alpacas.