Inspirational Women in Surgery: Dr Samantha Pillay, FRACS (Urologist, South Australia)

Dr Samantha Pillay was born in Adelaide, South Australia, the youngest of three girls. Her father, a Malaysian of Sri Lankan ethnicity, met her English mother in Singapore whilst working there as a doctor. At the age of two years, Dr Pillay was diagnosed with congenital hip dysplasia. This relegated her to spending much of her early childhood in hospital undergoing multiple surgical procedures. Her mother, determined to give her as normal a life as possible, installed a hospital bed with traction at home and later managed to find young Samantha an all-girls school that would allow her to attend class in a wheelchair. By the age of six, she had progressed from the wheelchair to crutches with callipers, to finally being able to walk unaided, with restrictions. She remembers getting up stairs in junior school by sitting on her bottom and shuffling up backwards. It wasn’t until Dr Pillay was at Adelaide University Medical School that she could finally walk up stairs one step after the other, while holding onto the handrail.