When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery

by Frank T. Vertosick Jr.

Failure instructs better than success. A single death shapes the surgeon’s psyche in a way that fifty “saves” cannot.

“Rule number one: You ain’t never the same when the air hits your brain.

The only minor operation is one that someone else is doing. If you’re doing it, it’s major. Never forget that.”

If the patient isn’t dead, you can always make him worse if you try hard enough.

There is a profound difference between pain and suffering. All animals feel pain. Only humans suffer. Pain is a physical sensation; suffering is an emotional state induced by pain. Suffering is pain coupled with uncertainty, depression, frustration, anger, fear, despair. We can have intense pain but not suffer.

Hippocrates once said that the chief function of medicine is to entertain patients until they heal themselves.

The more bizarre the description of the pain, the more likely it is to be a psychiatric delusion.

“Welcome to the real world, where people only want answers—correct, accurate answers. If a bridge collapses and kills forty people, who do you think cares whether the engineers set up the problem correctly? In life, there is no partial credit for being half right. If you want to accomplish anything important, you have to be totally right—and be willing to take the consequences if you are not.”