The Happy Pod: The surgeon who left his wedding to save a life
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 8.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A surgeon who left his wedding to save a life says it's inspired him to help more people. Also: one man's adventures with a pet goose; a police officer reunited with a baby he rescued; and why we should eat more custard.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:08.4 | I'm Debbie Russ and in this edition, the doctor who became a local hero by leaving his |
| 0:14.1 | own wedding to perform life-saving surgery. |
| 0:17.0 | Whether I operate on this patient or not, the outcome will affect my life totally in future, |
| 0:24.3 | so I did whatever I can. Also, I'm happy because now I have a travel companion. It follows me |
| 0:33.7 | everywhere, and when I sleep at night, it comes to sleep right next to me. |
| 0:38.2 | Why a man is walking the length of Vietnam with a goose. |
| 0:42.7 | The unusual bond between two police officers in the US reunited 25 years after one saved the other as a baby. |
| 0:50.7 | Plus, she tends to go to school with him in the morning, follows him and his friends, sometimes comes home with them, sometimes hangs about for after school. You know, they really have embraced her as part of the school community. |
| 1:01.4 | The cat with a 100% attendance record and a 106-year-old man shares his rather unexpected secret to a long life. |
| 1:16.4 | We start in Ethiopia with a surgeon who put aside his own wedding celebrations to save someone's |
| 1:22.7 | life. Dr. Brooke Weisha was getting ready for his big day when he received a call about a patient 40 kilometres away |
| 1:30.5 | at the hospital where he'd begun working as the first surgical specialist just three weeks before. |
| 1:36.8 | A 40-year-old man needed an urgent operation for a potentially fatal stomach condition. |
| 1:42.7 | Dr Brooke has been speaking to the Happy Pod's Holly Gibbs about |
| 1:45.9 | what happened on the day. I became a dilemma and I told to my family that I'm going to operate |
| 1:52.9 | on this patient and in our culture, on the week before and after like that, on the time of your |
| 1:59.0 | wedding, groom as well as the bride are not allowed to go outside of |
| 2:03.5 | their home because something may happen they said not to go but i understand the patient's outcome |
| 2:10.5 | it will be grave so whether i operate on this patient or not the outcome will affect my life totally in future. So I decided, if I am |
| 2:21.3 | not operating on this patient, I will be blaming myself for my lifetime. If I try on this patient |
| 2:27.3 | and even the patient die, I did whatever I can. And the outcome was so nice. And the good thing about this patient was young. |
... |
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