January 2018 Read/2

Title: Admissions: Life As a Brain Surgeon
Author: Marsh, Henry
Call Number: 617.48092 M365YM 2017
Book Description from amazon.com:

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.

My Read:

Page 72-"There has always been a tension at the heart of medicine, between caring for patients and making money. It involves, of course, a bit of both, but it's delicate balance and very easily upset. High pay and high professional standards are essential if this balance is to be maintained. The rule of law, after all, in part depends on paying judges so well that thy will not be tempted to accept bribes." 

---Dr. Marsh's saying about balance is true and can be applied to our daily life as well. What's a balanced life? More or less, we are dealing with balance in every aspect of our life.

Page 172-173-"But it is very easy to underestimate the importance of endless practice with practical skills. You learn them by doing, much more than by knowing. It becomes what psychologists call implicit memory. When we learn a new skill the brain has to work hard-it is a consciously directed process requiring frequent repetition and the expenditure of energy. But once it is learnt, the skill-the motor and sensory coordination of muscles by the brain-becomes unconscious, fast and efficient. Only a small area of the brain is activated when the skill is exercised, although at the same time it has been shown, for instance, that professional pianists' brains develop larger hand areas than the brains of amateur pianists. To learn is to restructure your brain. It is simple truth that has been lost sight of with the short working hours that trainee surgeons now put in, at least in Europe." 

---This description of Dr. Marsh's reinforces the saying: practice, practice, and more practice.

January 2018 Read

Title: Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery
Author: Marsh, Henry
Call Number: 617.48092 M365D 2015
Book Description from amazon.com:

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?

With astonishing compassion and candor, leading neurosurgeon Henry 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.

My Read:

Page 85-"The operating is the easy part, you know," he said. "By my age you realize that the difficulties are all to do with the decision-making." Dr. Marsh went to visit a senior neurosurgeon and told him of his deep desire to be a neurosurgeon. In real life decision-making is some kind of art hard to be excelled. In some cases listed in the book the outcome of an operation was unexpected. 

What I found after reading this book is that Dr. Marsh is a very disciplined person; he rode bike to work and ran in the morning, even when it was snowing or raining. To be a surgeon the doctor's hands must be steady. It's amazing that Dr. Marsh practiced more than 30 years as a neurosurgeon.

December Read/3

Title: Morgue: A Life in Death
Author: Di Maio, Vincent
Call Number: 616.07092 D582YM 2016
Book Description from amazon.com:

In this clear-eyed, gritty, and enthralling narrative, Dr. Vincent Di Maio and veteran crime writer Ron Franscell guide us behind the morgue doors to tell a fascinating life story through the cases that have made Di Maio famous―from the exhumation of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald to the complex issues in the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

Beginning with his street-smart Italian origins in Brooklyn, the book spans forty years of work and more than nine thousand autopsies, and Di Maio’s eventual rise into the pantheon of forensic scientists. One of the country’s most methodical and intuitive criminal pathologists will dissect himself, maintaining a nearly continuous flow of suspenseful stories, revealing anecdotes, and enough macabre insider details to rivet the most fervent crime fans.

My Read:

"Sorry, but that's not your exit wound," I repeated. "That's an entrance wound."-page 157

Exit wound or entrance wound? When I read the cases listed in this book I wondered how many cases in the real world are really solved, how justice is defined, how innocence is really innocence and, vice versa. Interpretation and assumption are dangerous, specially the later one.

Page-53 "Today, there are only about 500 working, board-certified forensic pathologists in the United States-about the same number as twenty years ago. Problem is, we need as many as 1,500 to keep up with the steadily increasing parade of unexplained deaths." When I read about this my mind went back to the well-known medical examiner back home, Dr. Yang. He is a legend in the field of pathology. One of the things people remember about Dr. Yang was his respect to his "patients." 

Cases/stories included in this book are fascinating. It's a good read.