Society said she just wasn't surgeon material, but God had other ideas. Now Sydney Anglican Grace Warren is being awarded a Pakistani medal for her ground-breaking work in leprosy.
"As a teenager I realised that God wanted me to be a missionary," Ms Warren says as she reflects on the path that brought her to the position of a prominent Christian and an internationally recognised specialist.
Ms Warren, a committed member of St Paul’s Chatswood, is to be awarded the Star of Pakistan by a government grateful for close to 40 years of service amongst some of its most disadvantaged citizens.
The Sitari-i-Pakistan is the country's third highest award for civilians; the equivalent of the Member in the Order of Australia.
The award recognises Ms Warren's pioneering work in the area of reconstructive hand, foot and facial surgery.
"I've been in Pakistan every two years since 1967 when I first started a surgery program for the rehabilitation of leprosy patients," Ms Warren says.
In that time she has carried out well over 800 operations.
She has also imparted her considerable knowledge to thousands of surgeons world-wide through international conferences.
Not bad for someone who wasn't supposed to hold a scalpel.
"We had no money, but God provided a commonwealth scholarship so that I could go to university. But the college of surgeons wouldn’t train a woman in those days."
However Ms Warren's desire to serve her Lord with a scalpel wasn't so easily stymied.
"I left Australia in 1957 to run an obstetrics hospital in Korea for the Presbyterian Church. Then I went to Hong Kong to be the assistant in a Leprosy Hospital there, and I slowly side-stepped my way into work in Pakistan."
Since that time Ms Grace has been elected to the Australasian College of Surgeons and the English College of Surgeons and awarded an MD by Sydney University.
"The person they wouldn’t train as a surgeon is now training the professors. God has his own ways of getting things done," she says laughing.
Her efforts as a Christian surgeon have graphically demonstrated the love at the heart of her faith by transforming the lives of hundreds of predominantly Muslim patients, as well as the Pakistani doctors and officials who observe her work.
"I consider that all my medical work is my service to God. I don’t get much chance to preach as such but I preach by what I do," she says.
Grace Warren will receive the Star of Pakistan in a service at the Pakistan Embassy in Canberra on March 23.
