When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery

by Frank T. Vertosick Jr.

My out-of-control Beetle completed one complete revolution as it exited the bridge, then regained its footing on the warmer asphalt of the roadway before taking off, straight as an arrow. I continued down the expressway at full speed as if nothing had happened. But something had happened. Although I was unhurt and my car undamaged, my outlook on driving could never be the same again. This experience taught me what a dozen Red Highway movies in Driver’s Ed did not: how very easy it was to lose control of a car and die. Decades later, I still feel the steering wheel dissolving in my hands as the car slides. One instant in complete command; the next, a terrified passenger thrown upon the mercy of fate for survival. I had been lucky, learning my lesson and paying no price. If only all lessons were so painless. A Native American proverb states that a child allowed to wander into the campfire learns better than a child told a thousand times to stay away. But this trick fails if that first trip into the fire burns the child to death. On that snowy expressway, I had wandered into the campfire and, by sheer luck, escaped unburned.