ENT specialist Dr Peter Friedland describes a rather wild life in his recently released memoir, which also explains how he came to care for Nelson Mandela’s hearing in his post-presidential years.
By Ara Jansen
If you’d read Dr Peter Friedland’s CV, it would be easy to think that he’d spent his early years doing battlefield medicine. Constantly dealing with complex bullet wounds, removing a knife from an eyeball and enough casualties in one hospital that post-op patients often had to recover on the floor were not unusual.
It sounds dramatic, but it was pretty normal for a doctor in Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city.
The other thing you wouldn’t miss on Peter’s CV is that from 2000 to 2009 he was the ear, nose and throat specialist to Nelson Mandela. The lessons he learnt from treating one of the world’s revered statesmen are a big part of Peter’s recently released memoir Quiet Time with the President: A Doctor’s Story about Learning to Listen.
Launched in August, the book was co-written with his sister Jill Margo, an author and awarded journalist with the Australian Financial Review.
Apart from meeting his wife, treating Mandela has been the most significant experience in his life. Peter talks about these meetings and other stories about practising medicine in Johannesburg in the book. It’s an interesting and sometimes moving story which easily blends political unrest, medicine and the intimate conversations with Mandela against the backdrop of the end of apartheid.
Refreshingly, the author isn’t shy about revealing his own scars and mistakes either.
No medical confidentiality has been violated in telling these stories and they prove an interesting insight because they come post-Mandela’s presidency, and conversations between just the two of them in Mandela’s home, arguably an incredibly unique point of view.
Naturally, the pair ended up talking widely on different topics, mostly political – ranging from Lockerbie and Gaddafi to AIDS – often taking tea together after the check-up. Peter says, if there’s one wonderful thing he took from their time together, it was how to listen.
A big part of treating Mandela was updating his hearing aids and making sure he could hear what was going on around him. Apart from his role in AIDS awareness, Mandela was also a huge advocate for hearing aids, once saying in a speech that “These little instruments made a big difference to my life. Wherever I go, they help me to listen better, to understand better.”
Peter’s interest in studying medicine stemmed back to an illness his father had that couldn’t be diagnosed. It left him almost a quadriplegic and there seemed no chance of remission.
“I witnessed his very poor care and the arrogance of the medical professionals,” says Peter. “I became angry about medicine and very disillusioned with doctors and medicine. I also realised I could make a difference and wanted to be a doctor who spoke to patients with dignity and be able to treat them regardless of whether they could afford it or the colour of their skin.”
Peter and his twin Richard both started their university studies in veterinary medicine and then moved into medicine. Peter went on to do his specialty in otolaryngology and Richard eventually did an MBA and last month, after almost 20 years, retired as the CEO of Netcare, South Africa’s biggest network of private hospitals.
While working in his specialty and becoming father to five children, including a set of twin girls, he was often called on by local emergency departments to help deal with the results of street violence.
From 2005 to 2009, Peter was clinical head of ENT at the University of Witwatersrand Donald Gordon Medical Centre in Johannesburg, where he was instrumental in convening the first cochlear implant workshop in Africa and performing the first middle ear implant in Africa.
From his early medical years, Peter committed himself to regular pro bono outreach in underprivileged and rural areas and supported and helped manage a school for 300 deaf and underprivileged children in a township outside Johannesburg.
He continues that work in Perth, working with Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service and visiting remote communities in the north of WA as well as working with the Royal Australian Air Force on emergency missions.
He is a loud and enthusiastic supporter of the public health system here and has chosen not to work exclusively in the private system because of his belief in having robust and excellent quality public health care.
“My mother taught us a commitment of service to humanity. You are given a gift if you become a doctor and that is to improve everyone’s lives, irrespective. And that’s what I teach my students – it’s about the dignity of human beings, no matter what they are doing.
“It’s part of why I am so committed to the public system. I had to start in the basement when I arrived here because my credentials were not accepted, so I gradually and quietly worked my way back up.
“I believe public patients deserve the highest standard of care. I also feel very strongly about children on waiting lists.”
He tells his students that he learnt several lessons from spending time with Mandela.
“He told me that every single human has a spark of humanity, and they have their own dignity and own truth. It doesn’t matter if they are Australian, Indonesian, African, Muslim or Sikh. If you look at them with that right to dignity, then it’s hard to be cruel towards them. You have to see the human being in everyone.
“The second lesson he taught me was how to listen. There’s a difference between hearing something with your ears versus listening with your brain and heart.” Peter cites a US study where they found that doctors only allowed eight to 11 seconds from when the patient started telling their story to when the doctor interrupted and started talking.
“It’s that doctor drug – you being present and making eye contact with a patient. They feel heard and that in itself is medicine and the start of the healing. Mandela could hold that silence and really listen to people.
“That’s healing for both sides – you hear their story; you hear their emotions and their history. That was an epiphany for me. I thought I was healing him so he could hear better, but he taught me to listen and that was healing for me.”
Peter’s South African medical experiences also seemed just a little unbelievable to the Australian hospitals looking at his CV when he decided it was time to raise his family in a safer city.
By the time he had turned 47, Peter had lost three of his closest male friends to the city’s ever-prevalent gun violence, one of whom had bled out in his arms in the carpark of his business and another who was shot in his car as the perpetrator tried to steal it. In the book he also mentions a red car tailing himself and Linda, which later is reported as being responsible for a couple of hijackings.
In 2009, he found a six-month job at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and the Friedland family – Linda (a non-practising doctor and international health consultant) and the children – moved to Perth.
An adult and paediatric ear, nose and throat specialist, today Peter is a consultant ENT at Joondalup Health Campus and SCGH, where he was head of ENT for six years and instrumental in recruiting five new fellowship-trained consultants in head and neck surgery and anterior skull base surgery.
He’s also the Garnett Passe Rodney Williams Foundation Professor of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery at UWA and SCGH and professor at School of Medicine at Notre Dame, where he teaches and coordinates the curriculum for final year medical students.
When he recently turned 60, Peter says it felt the time was right for the book. Alongside his sister they set about writing down all his stories and taking several trips to Johannesburg to fact-check. Peter found his old medical notes and dug out the journals where he documented his thoughts on his chats with Mandela.
South African proceeds from the book are going to hearing charity High Hopes, an early intervention partner for families of deaf and hard-of-hearing babies. Locally, Australian proceeds are going to Derbarl Yerrigan Health Service, a group which Peter works regularly with.
“I do pinch myself sometimes about the experience of meeting Madiba (his clan name). It was the highlight of my life. I got to help this incredible human. Being around him, you just felt this energy, like something was happening to you. He could connect with people at a very human level, no matter who they were. He just had something and he’s part of a very unique group.
“Meeting him has had a huge impact on my life. It has given me an appreciation on the sanctity of life – and an appreciation of the cruelty of humans.”
Now well settled in Australia and proud to be here, Peter says it’s a wonderful feeling to live in a city and feel safe. It’s an indescribable feeling to have such equanimity without the constant vigilance. The peace is priceless.
“I feel incredibly grateful to be here. Madiba might have changed my life, but moving to Australia changed our lives too.
“We love the ocean, and I run a lot. As a family we love the beach and Rottnest. We’ve done a lot of driving trips north. I also have five grandchildren here.”
Quiet Time with the President is available locally and online in hard copy, plus Kindle and audio book format.