Author of quotes: Do no harm

It was worth stopping at that moment and leaving the last part of the tumor intact, but I wanted to proudly say that I cut out the tumor completely. There are never any residual tumors in the postoperative pictures that neurosurgical stars show when they speak at conferences. As I began to remove the last piece of the tumor, I severed a tiny, pin-thick perforating branch from the basilar artery. A thin trickle of bright red arterial blood shot up, the damage to the brain stem was severe. As a result, the patient never woke up after the operation. Because of this, seven years later, I saw him in a nursing home. I learned two lessons that day. First: there is no need to perform an operation that a more experienced surgeon refused. Second: you need to treat reports at conferences with healthy skepticism.

The bitter truth of neurosurgery is that it takes a lot of practice to learn how to do complex operations well, which means a lot of mistakes at first, after which patients are left crippled. I think you have to be a bit of a psychopath to persist in doing this, or at least very thick-skinned. A doctor who is kind by nature will at some point give up, stop going against nature and confine himself to simple cases.

If I do not die instantly, then my only consolation will be my last assessment of my own life.

“It’s even unusual to feel so much love at once,” my mother said two days before her death. I doubt that any of us will be lucky - so to speak - to die such a perfect death when our time comes. To die rather quickly and completely painlessly, under the supervision of their own children, in the circle of a loving family. A couple of days before my mother's death, almost by accident, the whole family: children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren - gathered in the house. In addition, two of her old friends arrived. While she lay in her bedroom on the second floor, we gathered at the dinner table, reminiscing about her life, drinking in memory of her, although she was still alive, and enjoying dinner prepared by my future wife, Kate.

There is always another catastrophe waiting around the corner.

What torments me the most is the shame of my own incompetence.

My patients desperately need faith in me, which means I have to believe in myself.

As I reflect on some of the mistakes I've made throughout my long career, I find it comforting to know that the tendency to make mistakes, and indeed to make mistakes, is inherently, so to speak, in the human brain. I realized that I could be forgiven for some of the mistakes I've made over the years. Anyone can make a mistake, and we all understand this very well. The problem is that when doctors like me make a mistake, the consequences for patients can be disastrous.

Would he want to live like this?, then relatives will most likely answer in a completely different way. In fact, the doctor asks: Love

Previously, this feeling was called angor animi (translated from Latin - torment

Now, thirty years later, the then sense of self-importance seems to me ridiculous.

There is always hope, and there are always people - unfortunately a small minority - who defy dry statistics and manage to live a few more years.

Today

The best is the enemy of the good, I usually tell the assistants, who treat the operation like a spectacular sporting event. They like to point out to me that I could clip the aneurysm better - after all, they are not the ones who will have to deal with the consequences of an aneurysm that ruptured during the operation. And if this really happens, then how exciting it is to watch your boss unsuccessfully try to cope with a massive hemorrhage! When I was a trainee, this sight definitely gave me pleasure. In the end, it is not the trainee who will have to experience that unbearable feeling of guilt that tears the soul of a surgeon apart when, during a round, a patient crippled by him catches his eye.