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Our daughter made it among the top players in Czechoslovakia, and there was a real hope that she could make it into the top 20 in the world. I knew that she wouldn't be in the top ten, because she's got slow legs. She compensated for it with fantastic technique. She was a very sharp thinker, and was also good at the net. With a good partner, they could have been among the best doubles teams in the world. We were already putting her together with another top Czechoslovak player, Zrubakova [Zrubakova, Radka (b. 1970): former Slovak tennis player and currently a tennis coach. She was a member of the Czechoslovak national team that won the Fed Cup in 1988 – Editor's note] from Bratislava. Her father was vice dean at the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports of the University of Comenius in Bratislava. Also a tennis fanatic. His daughter was a good runner, she'd have played in the back and Marcela would have been up at the net.
At that time I was fully focused on her career. My boss at the time, the surgeon Cerny, wanted to specialize us in various fields, and wanted to make a plastic surgeon out of me. In those days Cerny was a big name. Later he transferred to Bratislava, where he became the head of the Kramare Hospital. I liked his idea about the plastic surgery, but I'd have had to leave for three years to Bratislava, to study. I told him that I wasn't going. Instead of thinking up some excuse, like for example that my mother was ill, I told him the truth. I can't go. Who will coach my daughter? As a result of this, he wrote me off. He was of the opinion that a surgeon should be a fanatic for whom everything else takes a back seat. No mother, no daughter, not even tennis! Later, when I wanted to do further attestations, he didn't let me. He looked for various pretexts. That's why I worked at the outpatient clinic all my life. My daughter was my hobby. During this I had to keep in shape. I began running long distances and marathons.
Alas, my daughter's career ended prematurely. While training in a gym, she fell and suffered a compound fracture of her forearm. She had to hang up tennis. She recuperated for a long time, and at last applied at the Faculty of Medicine at Comenius University in Martin. She did her attestation in anesthesiology. Several years ago she went to the USA for a study stay. When she returned home, she told us that they have an amazing top-quality facility there, incomparable to the ones in Slovakia. Something like that won't be here even in a hundred years. That she'd like to work and live there. So she found out everything necessary to be able to work in the USA. Today she works as an anesthesiologist for cardiac surgery in the city of Albany, the capital city of the state of New York. At the same time she does part-time work teaching medical graduates who want to pursue anesthesiology. She has no family yet; she's single.
At that time I was fully focused on her career. My boss at the time, the surgeon Cerny, wanted to specialize us in various fields, and wanted to make a plastic surgeon out of me. In those days Cerny was a big name. Later he transferred to Bratislava, where he became the head of the Kramare Hospital. I liked his idea about the plastic surgery, but I'd have had to leave for three years to Bratislava, to study. I told him that I wasn't going. Instead of thinking up some excuse, like for example that my mother was ill, I told him the truth. I can't go. Who will coach my daughter? As a result of this, he wrote me off. He was of the opinion that a surgeon should be a fanatic for whom everything else takes a back seat. No mother, no daughter, not even tennis! Later, when I wanted to do further attestations, he didn't let me. He looked for various pretexts. That's why I worked at the outpatient clinic all my life. My daughter was my hobby. During this I had to keep in shape. I began running long distances and marathons.
Alas, my daughter's career ended prematurely. While training in a gym, she fell and suffered a compound fracture of her forearm. She had to hang up tennis. She recuperated for a long time, and at last applied at the Faculty of Medicine at Comenius University in Martin. She did her attestation in anesthesiology. Several years ago she went to the USA for a study stay. When she returned home, she told us that they have an amazing top-quality facility there, incomparable to the ones in Slovakia. Something like that won't be here even in a hundred years. That she'd like to work and live there. So she found out everything necessary to be able to work in the USA. Today she works as an anesthesiologist for cardiac surgery in the city of Albany, the capital city of the state of New York. At the same time she does part-time work teaching medical graduates who want to pursue anesthesiology. She has no family yet; she's single.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Jan Hanak