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.