Download or read book Becoming a Neurosurgeon written by John Colapinto and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating guide to a career in neurosurgery written by award-winning journalist John Colapinto and based on the real-life experiences of an expert in the field—essential reading for someone considering a path to this most challenging profession. Choosing what to do with your life begins with imagining yourself in a career, actually meeting the emotional, physical, and intellectual demands of the job. Often regarded as one of the most technically and emotionally demanding of surgical disciplines, becoming a neurosurgeon requires years of study. This practical guide offers a unique opportunity to see what daily life for a neurosurgeon is like, from someone who has mastered the profession and can explain what the risks and rewards of the job really are. Joshua Bederson is the chief of Neurosurgery at the esteemed Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City. New Yorker writer John Colapinto brings to vivid life what Dr. Bederson’s professional life is like to show all the varied facets of his work, from extensive study and research to brain operations, one-on-one consultations with patients, and even staff meetings with fellow surgeons and students. Since Mt. Sinai is a teaching hospital, we learn alongside the residents and interns how Bederson trains neurosurgeons, passing along the knowledge and skills he honed over decades. The result is a multidimensional portrait of a man and a department, a practical guide for how to enter and learn the profession, as well as a moving glimpse into the world of patients and doctors who face some of life’s most harrowing challenges.
Download or read book Gray Matter written by David Levy and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2011-02-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A perfect blend of medical drama and spiritual insight, Gray Matter is a fascinating account of Dr. David Levy’s decision to begin asking his patients if he could pray for them before surgery. Some are thrilled. Some are skeptical. Some are hostile, and some are quite literally transformed by the request. Each chapter focuses on a specific case, opening with a detailed description of the patient’s diagnosis and the procedure that will need to be performed, followed by the prayer “request.” From there, readers get to look over Dr. Levy’s shoulder as he performs the operation, and then we wait—right alongside Dr. Levy, the patients, and their families—to see the final results. Dr. Levy’s musings on what successful and unsuccessful surgical results imply about God, faith, and the power of prayer are honest and insightful. As we watch him come to his ultimate conclusion that no matter what the results of the procedure are, “God is good,” we cannot help but be truly moved and inspired.
Download or read book All That Moves Us written by Jay Wellons and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The surgical interventions in these pages are dizzying, but the fact that Jay Wellons can write as well as he can operate provides a whole other level of amazement.”—Ann Patchett, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth “A powerful and moving account of the intense joys and sorrows of being a pediatric neurosurgeon.”—Henry Marsh, New York Times bestselling author of Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly Tumors, injuries, ruptured vascular malformations—there is almost no such thing as a non-urgent brain surgery when it comes to kids. For a pediatric neurosurgeon working in the medical minefield of the brain—in which a single millimeter in every direction governs something that makes us essentially human—every day presents the challenge, and the opportunity, to give a new lease on life to a child for whom nothing is yet fully determined and all possibilities still exist. In All That Moves Us, Dr. Jay Wellons pulls back the curtain to reveal the profoundly moving triumphs, haunting complications, and harrowing close calls that characterize the life of a pediatric neurosurgeon, bringing the high-stakes drama of the operating room to life with astonishing candor and honest compassion. Reflecting on lessons learned over twenty-five years and thousands of operations completed on some of the most vulnerable and precious among us, Wellons recounts in gripping detail the moments that have shaped him as a doctor, as a parent, and as the only hope for countless patients whose young lives are in his hands. Wellons shares scenes of his early days as the son of a military pilot, the years of grueling surgical training, and true stories of what it’s like to treat the brave children he meets on the threshold between life and death. From the little boy who arrived at the hospital near death from a gunshot wound to the head, to the eight-year-old whose shredded nerves were repaired using suture as fine as human hair, to the brave mother-to-be undergoing fetal spinal cord surgery, All That Moves Us is an unforgettable portrait of the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern children’s hospital—and a meditation on the marvel of life as seen from under the white-hot lights of the operating room.
Download or read book Another Day in the Frontal Lobe written by Katrina Firlik and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2007-06-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Katrina Firlik is a neurosurgeon, one of only two hundred or so women among the alpha males who dominate this high-pressure, high-prestige medical specialty. She is also a superbly gifted writer–witty, insightful, at once deeply humane and refreshingly wry. In Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Dr. Firlik draws on this rare combination to create a neurosurgeon’s Kitchen Confidential–a unique insider’s memoir of a fascinating profession. Neurosurgeons are renowned for their big egos and aggressive self-confidence, and Dr. Firlik confirms that timidity is indeed rare in the field. “They’re the kids who never lost at musical chairs,” she writes. A brain surgeon is not only a highly trained scientist and clinician but also a mechanic who of necessity develops an intimate, hands-on familiarity with the gray matter inside our skulls. It’s the balance between cutting-edge medical technology and manual dexterity, between instinct and expertise, that Firlik finds so appealing–and so difficult to master. Firlik recounts how her background as a surgeon’s daughter with a strong stomach and a keen interest in the brain led her to this rarefied specialty, and she describes her challenging, atypical trek from medical student to fully qualified surgeon. Among Firlik’s more memorable cases: a young roofer who walked into the hospital with a three-inch-long barbed nail driven into his forehead, the result of an accident with his partner’s nail gun, and a sweet little seven-year-old boy whose untreated earache had become a raging, potentially fatal infection of the brain lining. From OR theatrics to thorny ethical questions, from the surprisingly primitive tools in a neurosurgeon’s kit to glimpses of future techniques like the “brain lift,” Firlik cracks open medicine’s most prestigious and secretive specialty. Candid, smart, clear-eyed, and unfailingly engaging, Another Day in the Frontal Lobe is a mesmerizing behind-the-scenes glimpse into a world of incredible competition and incalculable rewards.
Download or read book Confessions of a One Eyed Neurosurgeon written by James Salmon, M.D. and published by Vantage Press, Inc. This book was released on 2009-04-17 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is a Methodist minister doing stand up comedy while leading his slightly inebriated patrons in prayer? Is it possible to have more than five successful careers in your lifetime? Yes you can, if you are Reverend Dr. James H. Salmon, M.D., FACS, CPA. Dr. Salmon tells all in his memoirs. Now retired from his many lifetime endeavors, the author has written an irreverent, fascinating, and truly humorous book that entertains, educates, and delights through little triumphs and big tragedies.
Download or read book Memoirs of a Neurosurgeon written by James D. Geissinger and published by . This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In reflecting upon my life as a neurosurgeon, perhaps the most salient feature is that period of history involved. Trained by men who studied under Harvey Cushing, considered the father of neurological surgery, we, as early third-generation neurosurgeons, were held to those rigid standards of academic achievement and physical endurance typical of that time. The reader first identifies with the young child who dreams of becoming a doctor, and then sets out on that long path. He then re-lives the experiences of the student of medicine, and later the rigorous demands placed upon the surgeon-in-training. During the later descriptions of the private practice of brain and spinal surgery, the book transitions into an educational experience. It presents to the reader a multitude of neurological disorders requiring surgical treatment, the relevant surgical anatomy and the operative techniques involved. Often interjected are the intangibles of surgical judgment and philosophy when confronting those in pain or critically ill. Of equal importance were the major scientific advancements which occurred during that period of medical history. No longer did we have to bore a hole in the skull, or inject noxious materials into the head or spinal canal to verify a diagnosis. Rather, we had been privileged to enjoy the development of such remarkable machines as the ultrasound, CAT, and MRI. Descriptions of these devices, among others, and their impact on medical practice should prove interesting to the inquisitive reader. After 21 years in practice, and probably at the height of my career as a surgeon, I contracted hepatitis B subsequent to an accidental needle puncture in the operating room. Forced to lay down the scalpel, I turned to my second childhood dream, cattle ranching, as an alternative vocation. This then becomes a secondary focus of the book. A medical colleague, after learning of my book, expressed an interest in learning the common denominator driving a man to both neurosurgery and ranching. One can summarize with the word, “counterpoise.” I had always strived to achieve a balance between the in-hospital, academic, precision-oriented work of the neurosurgeon and the outdoor, physically-demanding life of a rancher― consummating the total American dream. Analogous to surgery I have always enjoyed using my hands in the shop. Throughout the book sections have been devoted to various aspects of woodworking, and an effort not only to share my enthusiasm but also to expose underlying problems and pitfalls; challenges I have encountered in striving to become an artisan of fine furniture. The practice of medicine has undergone significant change during my lifetime. Not only have I witnessed a burgeoning, unsustainable increase in the cost of healthcare, but also major changes in the way in which medicine is being practiced in the new millennium. Having been a proud product of the “Lucky Few” generation, born between the years 1929 and 1945, I am rightfully able to compare today's practice of medicine with those of the latter half of the 20th century.
Download or read book Becoming Dr Q written by Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today he is known as Dr. Q, an internationally renowned neurosurgeon and neuroscientist who leads cutting-edge research to cure brain cancer. But not too long ago, he was Freddy, a nineteen-year-old undocumented migrant worker toiling in the tomato fields of central California. In this gripping memoir, Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa tells his amazing life story—from his impoverished childhood in the tiny village of Palaco, Mexico, to his harrowing border crossing and his transformation from illegal immigrant to American citizen and gifted student at the University of California at Berkeley and at Harvard Medical School. Packed with adventure and adversity—including a few terrifying brushes with death—Becoming Dr. Q is a testament to persistence, hard work, the power of hope and imagination, and the pursuit of excellence. It’s also a story about the importance of family, of mentors, and of giving people a chance.
Download or read book World s Fastest Neurosurgeon written by Jim Lowe and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-09-11 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World's Fastest Neurosurgeon is the first-hand story of Dr. Jim Lowe and his personal journey on a 170-mph path less traveled in pursuit of sports car racing glory. More than simply a book about striving for motorsports success, however, World's Fastest Neurosurgeon provides the reader with a multifaceted tale that touches on several universal and familiar human traits and motivations. This is one man's story of perseverance, life balance, goal attainment and good old fashion chasing your dreams, both in the operating room as a leading Neurosurgeon and on the high-speed straights and turns of North America's top race circuits. A familiar tale to all who have faced challenging odds in pursuit of greatness, Dr. Lowe gives readers a look at the demands of top-tier, modern-day sports car road racing and the complexities of balancing his need for speed with his successful surgical career and family life. Readers will be able to take a look at their own lives while delving into this engaging tale of challenge, failure, success and redemption, very likely ending up with some of their own conclusions and personal insights. The fact that Dr. Lowe writes about the various aspects of his life and careers in an open and unreserved manor makes World's Fastest Neurosurgeon an entirely honest and refreshing read. Easy-flowing yet at times gripping glimpses into every aspect of Dr. Lowe's life keep the reader totally engaged. In World's Fastest Neurosurgeon, the tireless, personable and multi-talented Dr. Lowe delivers a meaningful and moving story that readers will long remember as a manual for living life to the fullest.
Download or read book Do No Harm written by Henry Marsh and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-05-26 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller Shortlisted for both the Guardian First Book Prize and the Costa Book Award Longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction A Finalist for the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize A Finalist for the Wellcome Book Prize A Financial Times Best Book of the Year An Economist Best Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates thought, feeling, and reason? How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially lifesaving operation when it all goes wrong? In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor's oath to "do no harm" holds a bitter irony. Operations on the brain carry grave risks. Every day, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh must make agonizing decisions, often in the face of great urgency and uncertainty. If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practiced by calm and detached doctors, this gripping, brutally honest account will make you think again. With astonishing compassion and candor, Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets, and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life. Do No Harm provides unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital. Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions.
Download or read book The Neurosurgeon s Handbook written by George Samandouras and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 974 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Neurosurgeon's Handbook' covers all aspects of adult and paediatric neurosurgery such as epidemiology, pathology, clinical and neuroradiological characteristics and clinical management.
Download or read book When Breath Becomes Air written by Paul Kalanithi and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.
Download or read book Brain Surgeon written by Keith Black and published by Wellness Central. This book was released on 2014-07-02 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A compelling look at one man's journey into the inner workings of the brain"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Young Neurosurgeon written by Paul Edward Kaloostian and published by University of New Mexico Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This memoir of the experiences of a neurosurgery resident at a busy trauma center provides a rare window into the training of doctors who operate on patients' brains and spinal cords. Kaloostian's account describes the life-saving feats and tragic failures that are daily realities of twenty-first-century neurosurgery"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book No Place to Hide written by W. Lee Warren and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2014-05-06 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Join Air Force veteran Dr. W. Lee Warren as he chronicles his fascinating, heartbreaking, and enlightening experience as a neurosurgeon in an Iraq War combat hospital. Warren's life as a neurosurgeon in a trauma center began to unravel long before he shipped off to serve the U.S. Air Force in Iraq in 2004. When he traded a comfortable, if demanding, practice in San Antonio, Texas, for a ride on a C-130 into the combat zone, he was already reeling from months of personal struggle. At the 332nd Air Force Theater Hospital at Joint Base Balad, Iraq, Warren realized his experience with trauma was just beginning. In his 120 days in a tent hospital, he was trained in a different specialty--surviving over a hundred mortar attacks and trying desperately to repair the damages of a war that raged around every detail of every day. No place was safe, and the constant barrage wore down every possible defense, physical or psychological. One day, clad only in a T-shirt, gym shorts, and running shoes, Warren was caught in the open while round after round of mortars shook the earth and shattered the air with their explosions, stripping him of everything he had been trying so desperately to hold on to. In No Place to Hide, Warren tells his story in a brand-new light, sharing how you can: Discover who you are under pressure Lean on faith in your darkest days Find the strength to carry on, no matter what you're facing Whether you are in the midst of your own struggles with faith, relationships, finances, or illness, No Place to Hide will teach you that how you respond in moments of crisis can determine your chances of survival. Praise for No Place to Hide: "No Place to Hide captures simply, eloquently, and passionately what it means to be a physician in time of war. Over ten years of war, we safely air evacuated more than ninety thousand injured and ill from Iraq and Afghanistan--five thousand were the sickest of the sick. This very personal story captures the essence of what it takes to be a military physician and the challenge for our nation to reintegrate all who deploy to war." --Lt. Gen. (ret.) C. Bruce Green, MD, 20th AF Surgeon General "Through Warren's eyes we observe not only the delicate mechanics of brain surgery but also its lifelong effects on real people and their families, both when the surgery succeeds and when it fails. Thank you, Lee Warren, for letting us see the world through your own unique vantage point. Thank you for the lives you saved, for the compassion you showed, for the faith you rediscovered, for reminding us of the precious gift of life." --Philip Yancey, bestselling author of The Jesus I Never Knew
Download or read book Admissions written by Henry Marsh and published by Thomas Dunne Books. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Finalist, International Bestseller, and a Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2017! “Marsh has retired, which means he’s taking a thorough inventory of his life. His reflections and recollections make Admissions an even more introspective memoir than his first, if such a thing is possible.” —The New York Times "Consistently entertaining...Honesty is abundantly apparent here--a quality as rare and commendable in elite surgeons as one suspects it is in memoirists." —The Guardian "Disarmingly frank storytelling...his reflections on death and dying equal those in Atul Gawande's excellent Being Mortal." —The Economist Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical frontline. There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. Following the publication of his celebrated New York Times bestseller Do No Harm, Marsh retired from his full-time job in England to work pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. In Admissions he describes the difficulties of working in these troubled, impoverished countries and the further insights it has given him into the practice of medicine. Marsh also faces up to the burden of responsibility that can come with trying to reduce human suffering. Unearthing memories of his early days as a medical student, and the experiences that shaped him as a young surgeon, he explores the difficulties of a profession that deals in probabilities rather than certainties, and where the overwhelming urge to prolong life can come at a tragic cost for patients and those who love them. Reflecting on what forty years of handling the human brain has taught him, Marsh finds a different purpose in life as he approaches the end of his professional career and a fresh understanding of what matters to us all in the end.
Download or read book American Neurosurgeon written by Ajay Bindal and published by . This book was released on 2018-06-27 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a stiff body and weak hands, the life of religious family-man, Archer, was turned upside-down when a trip to the doctor had him diagnosed with a spinal cord tumor. Archer wasn't ready to die. After making love, a couple is struck by tragedy. A night that should have ended with a sparkling ring and a kiss ends instead with a devastating trip to the hospital. After twenty beautiful years with her husband, Clara wasn't about to give up. Can love and faith defeat Death? What is the soul? How do we understand it? Follow the journey of American neurosurgeon, Dr. Ajay Bindal, through the high-powered world of brain surgery with fast-paced life or death decisions. Dr. Bindal's experiences reveal the true nature of life, death, and human existence as he sees his patients battle grief with faith and religion. Based on true stories from a neurosurgeon's life, this novel is recounted by his daughter.
Download or read book Life Lessons from a Brain Surgeon written by Rahul Jandial and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER *As heard on Chris Evans' Virgin Radio* 'You're amazing I could talk to you (Rahul) all day' Chris Evans 'This is a gripping new book' The Times World-leading neuroscientist and neurosurgeon Dr Rahul Jandial draws on his years of work with patients suffering from the most extreme cases of brain damage, disorders and illnesses to reveal what they can tell us about the science of the mind. From a languages teacher who has to choose whether to lose her ability to speak Spanish or English after brain surgery, to a former TV exec, now homeless, who discovers that his life-altering despondency is the result of a tumour, to a fainting teen who learns that deep breathing can mean the difference between life or death, these stories uncover the secret workings of the brain. Blending cutting-edge research and beautiful storytelling, Life Lessons from a Brain Surgeon is a vital resource on the best ways to boost your memory, control stress and emotions, minimize pain, unleash your creativity, raise smart kids and reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. This is a deeply practical and readable book, which will take you on an expedition through the anatomy of the most fascinating - and mysterious - of organs. Rahul's new book Life on a Knife's Edge is out now.
