Good Evening everyone. Bonsoir tout le monde. I would like to thank the Father Jean Foundation for inviting me as guest speaker for this year's banquet. I am particularly honoured to be guest speaker this year, for it being the year of the summer Olympics. Some may argue this is our own version of Academic Olympics.

But aside from the Olympics, it has also been a very busy year for world events, as well as things that have touched and shaped our own community. Some good, and some bad.

Well be as it may, I got the call from Mr. Martin. I was asked to be tonight's guest speaker and talk about success. Maybe add a few words of encouragement for those who might be entering the medical field. I found that to be a hard task. What is success? Am I there yet? How do you define success? Before I continue, I promised myself some years ago that should I ever become guest speaker I would keep my speech short... and to the point. I will tell you why.

Some years ago, I, like you, was in the receiving zone. I sat there in the back with my mom and dad, my heart beat was racing... sweat on my forehead... the longer the speech the longer my bladder was filling...
Then they started calling the names. Oh no. Mine is s000 far away... Finally my name... Gotta get up... 30 more steps to go. Try not to trip while a few hundred people are watching each and every move. Oh - oh... picture time. Hope my fly is up.
You see what I just did was called transference, I just transferred my own fears to you in a similar and yet very likely situation.

Transference is also a key component to inspiration. Every successful person has been inspired by something, or someone. My personal source of inspiration? Please don't laugh. But as a child, it was Star Trek. No not Star Trek the Next Generation. Star Trek period. The original cast and crew with William Shatner as Captain Kirk, Leonard Nemoy as Spock, and of course, who can forget Dr. McCoy: Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor not a space engineer.'

You see, in the late sixties, the space race was the theme. Every boy wanted to become an astronaut. Who wouldn't? I was as young as five years old, but on Saturday afternoon I watched the show on our black and white TV set. At that age, I could not make the difference between reality TV as Amrstrong's landing on the moon, from Captain Kirks and his crew beaming down on Romulus. Only problem I was scared of the phaser gun. You see, earlier that year I had burnt myself on my birthday candle. But Dr McCoy never gets hurt on the show. He helps people who are hurt. He was also the one who had a stash of Romulan brew hidden in his medical cabinet, which must be samohonka by any other name.

So here is my reasoning at age 5. If I become a doctor, I’ll go to space and I’ll never get zapped. True story. Mom... Dad... I want to be a doctor! They were happy, but never knew why.
Inspiration is important. But it takes more than inspiration to be successful. It also takes talent. Now here is the question. Are you born with talent or do you learn talent? Nature or nurture? Well if talent depended solely on genes, who would want to go to school? There would probably be a talent-gene sold on the market. It doesn't work that way does it? No it takes hard work; it takes a whole lot of dedication.

I can probably hammer a few nails, but that is not going to make me a carpenter. I can throw a few hoops, but no matter how many I throw, I will never be a pro basketball player. Ain't going to happen. People - try to not act too surprised. It takes a whole lot of sweat to get there.

So the Keys of Success we nailed down so far. Inspiration, Talent, Dedication and Perspiration. Is that it? Ok that’s all there is to it? Unfortunately no. It also takes a bit of luck. It takes what is classically known as a good thing. Being at the right place, at the right time, and with the right stuff.

Case in point. Second World War. Bad. Very bad. But hadn’t it been for the war, my parents, as well as many of yours would probably have never met. I would most probably not be here today. My dad called it the Lords guidance. He was right. But you can't control that.

As I got older and went to school, my dreams as space cadet were put on hold. I had to go to Ukrainian school on Saturdays. That was not an option in my house. Same goes for Ukrainian dancing. I knew I never would make it as a Shumka dancer but boy did I ever love to dance with swords.

Now here is a valuable tip to parents. Learn from my mistakes. If you are going to send your kids to Ukrainian school, please make them understand the difference between the English and the Cyrillic alphabet. Some letters look so much alike but pronounced completely differently, as had to be explained to my French spelling teacher who at one point lost complete hope in me. So now you know why I never made it as a poet.

High school was great, it was actually fun. I was introduced to the sciences. Made lots of friends with similar interests. Had lots of time for friends. Trembita Band on Wednesday, more Ukrainian school and altar boy on Sunday, and SUM Camp in the summer.

Unfortunately the reality of Canada not having a space program finally sank in. To make matters worse I discovered that I had an aversion; some would call it a gastric aversion to high velocity rides as 'the zipper' or 'the spider' at La Ronde, let alone pulling negative seven Gs on take-off. The space program went on without me, as Dr. Marc Garneau became the first Canadian Astronaut. But by then I had aced my courses in Sciences at College Marie-Victorin and thought to be true to Dr. McCoy by pursuing a career in medicine.

Here is where life continues to be hard on me. The law of the land that year to get into medicine was the infamous COTE Z. Now I hear it’s called the COTE R. No Matter how great is your average, if your class average is high you are doomed as I was to do a bachelors degree before entering medical school. No Matter how great is your average, if your class average is high you are doomed as I was to do a bachelors degree before entering medical school. Not that it really mattered. I had very supportive parents and wasn't in a hurry to get married.

Here is my second advice. Always have a plan B. However obvious it may seem, one should always have a plan B. This is true in business; this is true in the operating room. It is true in love. Always have a plan B. Bad business plans, bad surgical outcomes, bad girlfriends. We all see it. Do not obsess over things you cannot control for it will take the best of you if you will let it.

So I finished my bachelors in Biomedical sciences at Trois Rivieres. Aced that one too. Reapplied but this time didn't take any chances. Got into med, Vet, pharm and law. Uh-uh Dr McCoy here I come.

I remember the first medical school. Out of 6,000 applicants, we were the chosen ones, said the dean. We were accepted for different reasons. Couldn't understand why they chose the first violinist from the Orchestra Symphonique de Montreal, not the chicken farmer from Jonquiere, Their only common factors were that they both completed a bachelors in science and were over 45 which in itself was unusual. But nevertheless everyone was happy to be in. And everyone heard the Dean say: 'Society will depend on our success.'

Success, that is what I was going to talk about tonight. Well, if success means to cram thousands of pages of information for exams, then I can say, I succeeded. If success means to spend hundreds of hours staying awake studying while your friends are having fun… I can honestly say I succeeded.

Here is where one finds the human cost of success. The lack of time. Time becomes a precious commodity. If you spend too much time doing this, then you have less time doing that. Here is my third advice to you. Balance. You have to find balance between school, work, friends and family, some time for yourself and some time with God. Success or failure in life will depend on your ability, or not, to achieve this balance. I’ll get back to this in a second.

Believe it or not, after three years in medical school you still have to go through a selection process. Psychiatry, surgery, OBS-GYN, internal medicine or Pediatrics. If you like to heal with pills I guess you would choose internal medicine. If you like to heal with cold steel... you choose surgery. If you like to heal by talking about it... you choose psychiatry. If you like to heal small people and their parents, you choose pediatrics. If you like OBS GYN... I don't know...

Big decisions to make. This time they give you help, by doing what is classically known as clinical rotations. For fifty weeks straight you are required to be initiated, learn and excel in each of the disciplines of classical medicine.

Here is week one. True story. On call with my attendant 30 year old patient comes in with her friend. Her friend was worried about her. She keeps saying her boyfriend is about to kill her. The patient was properly evaluated by the attendant. No signs of psychotic behavior. No danger for herself or for others. Later discharged for outpatients follow-up. One problem. My attendant made a terrible mistake. Doctors are people. And people make mistakes. In this case, if you eliminate the possible, you are left with the impossible no matter how improbable. In other words, the patient was truly being stalked by her boyfriend, and in a gesture of manic jealousy, a double murder suicide occurred in front of the hospital doors. Cops. Ambulance. Pulse news. Everyone was there. I saw my own attendant in shock. I discovered one lesson that was not in my books, sometimes when you try to help, you get hurt, sometimes pretty badly.

I’ve seen psychotics with steak knives, manic-depressives with large chests, passive-aggressive borderline personality disorders: they were all going to get me. Why would anyone even bother? Why not just lock them up.

 Well mental illness is a disease. Just like having a cold. And even though we are not taught so, in every emergency room there is a war going on. It's a war on death, disease and despair. You can treat disease and despair most of the time. Death nobody wins. It’s going to happen. Nobody knows when. A doctor's only wish is that a patient that cannot be cured doesn't die on his shift.

So what about the surgery rotation? What about the OBS_GYN rotation? Those were fun. Really exciting.

Nothing more beautiful than to assist the birth of a baby... Sure it’s scary the baby is so wet; you feel that it might just slip. Attendant had a quick reply. Don't worry if its slips it can’t go any further than the umbilical cord. To this day I am not sure if he spoke from experience.

So you are on call for a week at a time, making sure those future mothers and babies are doing fine. First night. No sweat. Second. Oh, oh... By the third night as a medical student you are in a state what is called sleep deprivation. You are a walking zombie trying to find five minutes of sleep and hope your pager doesn't ring.

This brings me to my next point. Know your own limits. Too many people learn this the hard way. Life as surgeon can be exciting unless you don't spend enough quality time with your family. When your family always sees you grumpy because you haven't slept in a week it can take a toll on your personal life as well. Remember what I said - balance. Millions of stories. Sorry too little time.

So why did I choose ophthalmology? First of all for those who don't know what ophthalmology is, it's the surgical specialty that pro­motes health and the preservation of sight as well as the prevention of blindness. It’s also one of the specialties that had benefited the most from lasers, so I swear I heard Dr. McCoy chuckling when I got in. It’s not as glamorous as other specialties, but it’s honest work and it keeps my sanity intact not to mention my beauty sleep. Nothing, but nothing makes me happier than to make a blinded patient see again. I was told by my patients it makes the world worth being lived, and I thank God for being able to make thirty patients smile every week.

One last patient. An elderly man was sent to the ER a few years ago in respiratory distress. It was a bad case of bronchitis. On examination they found a newly discovered irregular heartbeat that might need to be corrected. So they ordered the appropriate tests. Unfortunately that's when things starting to go wrong. The IV line was accidentally opened and the whole bag of fluid went into the blood line, and soon the patient was drowning in his own fluid.

The resident on call soon discovered what had happened and gave the appropriate medications but too much of it too fast and soon there was too little fluid, known ashypovolumic shock condition, and the patient went into kidney failure. That brought him to the intensive care, which led to intuba­tions and unfortunately death a few days later from septic shock.

The patient was aware of the events, as the situation unfolded. Before passing away the man in his gentle voice reassured me that there was no bitterness. He came to the hospital out of his own free will to be helped and despite the events, he knew one day it would come to this. He was absolutely ready to meet God.
He felt happy because he started his life in poverty, he wanted to go to school so badly but couldn't because he was the oldest son that had to work the fields. War had displaced him from his homeland and family. He was happy because he succeeded to do what he wanted to do. Stay alive through war, getting married and raising his children putting them through school. So in his own way, his life was a success story. This man was my father. And I am here today because of him.

This brings me to my last and final point. Success has nothing to do with money in the bank, cars in the garage or diplomas on the wall. Success in measured by what we do with what we have and how that affects the people around us. You are all blessed with great talent, dedication, and you are almost there, but don't stop now. Life is short, but it's not a race. Make the most of it, but don't take unnecessary risks.

My name is Dr. Eugene Hladky. I hope that today, you have learned something new about the meaning of success. And I will ask the recipients to please be careful not to trip as they step to get their awards.
Thank you. Merci Beaucoup Pere Josaphat Jean.

Dr. Eugene Hladky,
November 20th, 2004