Under the Knife

Liz went to medical school in Cardiff in 1998 and trained in South Wales and East Anglia for twenty years until she made it as a consultant breast surgeon in 2013. She spent her days treating women with breast cancer and loved her job. After getting breast cancer twice, she was forced to retire in 2018 and has been busier than ever forging a new career from her home in Suffolk.She wrote The Complete Guide to Breast Cancer: How to Feel Empowered and Take Control (Vermillion, 2018) with Prof Trisha Greenhalgh to give women answers to all the questions she had as a patient. She speaks all over the world about resilience and how to improve patient care. Last year, she launched a podcast, Don’t Ignore the Elephant, to help more people talk about taboos like sex and death.

'What stays with me is O’Riordan’s compelling description of training, which doctors will recognise as a sort of Hunger Games with the post of consultant as a prize, though with no guarantee that you will be left happy or healthy enough to enjoy the role. The author succeeds not only in telling us how she learned to love her life after cancer, but how a life after medicine can offer fulfilment too' Roopa Farooki, Guardian 'Gave me a real insight into what it takes to become a surgeon, and how hard it is to be a breast cancer patient when you know far too much about it' Jane Garvey 'Liz opens herself up to us like a patient opened up on an operating table, shining a bright light onto what it is to be a human being who holds the fates of other human beings in their hands' Greg Wise 'This riveting memoir lays bare the highs and lows of life as a lady surgeon. Liz O'Riordan takes us behind the scenes with the ruthless precision of someone who knows how to wield a scalpel and a pen. A real action-driven page-turner, the book also makes a thought-provoking contribution to the wider debate on how we as a society look after our healthcare professionals, and highlights the different way we treat physical and mental illness. I cannot praise it highly enough and long for it to be available in all good bookshops so that I can urge people to buy it!' Cathy Rentzenbrink '[This] is, in fact, the story of two women: one is driven by ambition to be at the top of her game, to face down adversity whether that is sexism in the medical profession or fatigue in the quest for triathlon medals; the other is her hidden self, ravaged by misgivings – will she ever be enough? With extraordinary candour, breast surgeon Liz O'Riordan reveals the emotional journey unleashed by her own diagnosis of breast cancer, a confrontation that will strip her of her breast, her fertility and her career, yet finally show her that she is, indeed, enough. Liz's story reminds us all that our achievements do not define us. In the end, we find wisdom by living authentically, and that decision is the root of fulfilment' Dr Kathryn Mannix