When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery

When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery PDF Author: Frank Vertosick
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393344029
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
The story of one man's evolution from naive and ambitious young intern to world-class neurosurgeon. With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain, a young man struck down in his prime by paraplegia, and a minister with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull. Told through intimate portraits of Vertosick’s patients and unsparing yet fascinatingly detailed descriptions of surgical procedures, When the Air Hits Your Brain—the culmination of decades spent struggling to learn an unforgiving craft—illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.

When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery

When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery PDF Author: Frank Vertosick
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393344029
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book

Book Description
The story of one man's evolution from naive and ambitious young intern to world-class neurosurgeon. With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain, a young man struck down in his prime by paraplegia, and a minister with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull. Told through intimate portraits of Vertosick’s patients and unsparing yet fascinatingly detailed descriptions of surgical procedures, When the Air Hits Your Brain—the culmination of decades spent struggling to learn an unforgiving craft—illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.

When the Air Hits Your Brain

When the Air Hits Your Brain PDF Author: Frank T. Vertosick
Publisher: Fawcett
ISBN: 9780449227138
Category : Nervous system
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
With insight, humor, and poignancy, Dr. Frank Vertosick chronicles his remarkable evolution from naive young intern to world-class neurosurgeon. In candid detail, this book illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.

When the Air Hits Your Brain

When the Air Hits Your Brain PDF Author: Frank T. Vertosick
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nervous system
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description


Another Day in the Frontal Lobe

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe PDF Author: Katrina Firlik
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812973402
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book

Book Description
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.

When the Air Hits Your Brain

When the Air Hits Your Brain PDF Author: Frank Jr Vertosick
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393330494
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book

Book Description
The story of one man's evolution from naïve and ambitious young intern to world-class neurosurgeon. With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain, a young man struck down in his prime by paraplegia, and a minister with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull. Told through intimate portraits of Vertosick’s patients and unsparing yet fascinatingly detailed descriptions of surgical procedures, When the Air Hits Your Brain—the culmination of decades spent struggling to learn an unforgiving craft—illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.

Admissions

Admissions PDF Author: Henry Marsh
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
ISBN: 1250127270
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Brain Surgeon

Brain Surgeon PDF Author: Keith Black
Publisher: Grand Central Life & Style
ISBN: 9780446544528
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
Welcome to tiger country: the treacherous territory where a single wrong move by a brain surgeon can devastate-or end-a patient's life. This is the terrain world-renowned neurosurgeon Keith Black, MD, enters every day to produce virtual medical miracles. Now, in BRAIN SURGEON, Dr. Black invites readers to shadow his breathtaking journeys into the brain as he battles some of the deadliest and most feared tumors known to medical science. Along the way, he shares his unique insights about the inner workings of the brain, his unwavering optimism for the future of medicine, and the extraordinary stories of his patients-from ministers and rock stars to wealthy entrepreneurs and uninsured students-whom he celebrates as the real heroes. BRAIN SURGEON offers a window into one man's remarkable mind, revealing the anatomy of the unflinching confidence of this master surgeon, whose personal journey brought him from life as a young African-American boy growing up in the civil rights era South to the elite world of neurosurgery. Through Dr. Black's white-knuckle descriptions of some of the most astonishing medical procedures performed today, he reveals the beauty and marvel of the human brain and the strength and heroism of his patients who refuse to see themselves as victims. Ultimately, BRAIN SURGEON is an inspiring story of the struggle to overcome odds-whether as a man, a doctor, or a patient. PRAISE FOR BRAIN SURGEON "An inspirational book about true heroes - readers will marvel at Keith Black's achievements both as a doctor and as a man, and will be in awe of his patients' courage and will to survive." --Denzel Washington "A rare, behind-the-curtain look at the life of one of the most pre-eminent neurosurgeons in the world." --Sanjay Gupta, MD, Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN

Why We Hurt

Why We Hurt PDF Author: Frank T. Vertosick
Publisher: Harvest
ISBN: 9780156014038
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 316

Get Book

Book Description
Explains how pain evolved through time as a natural process that affects the body's ability to function, with narratives describing the various types of pain suffered by patients.

Something Awesome

Something Awesome PDF Author: William A. Friedman
Publisher: Radius Book Group
ISBN: 1635767512
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Get Book

Book Description
In this medical memoir, Dr. Friedman recounts the humorous, tragic, and always intense relationships of neurosurgeons to their colleagues and patients. He details what it takes to become a leading neurosurgeon and deal with deadly brain diseases and their devastating complications. He weighs in on universal health care in the United States. He also answers such questions as how does the mind work, why is trigeminal neuralgia called the “suicide disease,” and how will we ultimately cure cancer of the brain? Through his exhilarating and challenging experiences, Dr. Friedman shares his lifelong journey, one that has truly been "something awesome."

My Own Medicine

My Own Medicine PDF Author: Geoffrey Kurland
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 1940941008
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Get Book

Book Description
Approaching his forty-first birthday, Dr. Geoffrey Kurland was a busy man. His work as a Pediatric Pulmonologist , caring for children with lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis and asthma, led to long hours on the wards at the University of California, Davis Medical Center. At the same time, he was in the midst of training for the Western States Endurance Run, a grueling 100-mile long footrace across the wilderness of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. His long training runs, the responsibilities of patient care and teaching, and relationships attempting to replace his departed girlfriend occupied most of his life. Dr. Kurland’s ordered world is suddenly turned upside-down when he is diagnosed with Hairy Cell Leukemia, a rare blood cancer with a low survival rate. His work, his running, and his friendships are altered by his struggle to survive. He finds he must undergo many of the procedures he performed on his patients, must endure surgery and chemotherapy, and must relinquish control of his life to his physicians, surgeons, and his disease. He learns first-hand what cannot be taught in medical school about the consuming power of a chronic illness and its treatment. Confronting his own mortality, Dr. Kurland is now the patient while remaining a physician and runner. With the support of his physicians at the Mayo Clinic, the University of California, and the University of Pittsburgh, he resolves to continue to live his life despite his potentially fatal disease. He discovers his personal inner strengths as well as weaknesses as he struggles to confront his illness and regain some of the control he lost to it. Along his nearly two and a half year journey, we follow Dr. Kurland as he endures surgical procedures, chemotherapy, and life-threatening complications of his illness. He emerges into remission with new inner strength and understanding of what it means to be a doctor. He also finds that he is still a runner, with the same goal, to run the 100 miles across the Sierra Mountains. PRAISE: “Taut, dramatic, and intensely real…Very well written.” —Oliver Sacks, bestselling author of Seeing Voices and Hallucinations "[My Own Medicine] should be required reading for every medical professional. Kurland never asks for sympathy or pity...What comes through powerfully is his humanity, which his own bout with illnesses has clearly enhanced, and from which both his patients and his readers will benefit." —The New York Times "While training as a pediatric pulmonologist, Kurland told a patient, 'I know how you feel'; years later, when he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, he discovered just how untrue this was...The way in which serious illness alters one's sense of self and of life is compellingly expressed in this energetic, nervy narrative, as Kurland's illness and eventual recovery collide with a host of profound shifts—a big career move, the death of a colleague, an unravelling relationship with his girlfriend, and a deepening one with his parents." —The New Yorker