Radmila Janíčková

"I went to Skalice, where there were these opportunities, but because I wanted to do surgery, I suddenly realised that the obstetrics and gynaecology had this surgery... it was limited to the abdomen, plus babies, and I suddenly became interested in that field. And two years before graduation, I was already attending - and I'll tell you, it helped me a lot when I came to Prague - I started going to the Obilný trh maternity hospital in Brno, which is well-known. It's a pavilion - just maternity and gynaecology, where they have an internist and a surgeon if they need one. And for two years before graduation I was there all the time. They called us 'permanent medics' - four guys and me who were interested in that specialty. We also had a little room up in the attic where we could change into medical clothes, shirts, pants, gowns. And in any spare time, we were even getting out of lectures, they weren't as important in those last years. I was a diligent listener, we would go there and even serve overnight."

"Of course the money all went to hell. We only had enough money at home for food until the end of the month. The comrades put stickers on our furniture - 'confiscated', they lifted our mattresses because they were searching for money. We didn't have any at home because my father had it all in the bank. So family relatives and friends were helping us, bringing us food until it was sorted out somehow. My mother was looking for work. She had a very nice job - by being able to speak Czech, German, shorthand, typing like she was firing a machine gun. She got a job as a typist or a clerk in the Provincial Archives, where she was very happy because the philosopher-doctors came to her for advice on how to translate something. They had researched something, maybe it was in old German, so my mother was respected there, transcribing their work for them. That was interesting for her too, she was happy there. The pay wasn't much. It lasted maybe a year or so, they gave Daddy a pension of five hundred crowns, and Daddy lived on that for the next twenty years, until he died, he had five hundred crowns. Five hundred in those days, that was something. When I started working after I graduated, my net was nine hundred."