When I started to approach the nerve, deep in the part of the skull known as the cerebellopontine angle, the vein tore and a torrential haemorrhage of dark purple venous blood resulted. I was operating at a depth of six or seven centimetres, through a two-centimetre diameter opening, in a space only a few millimetres across, next to various vital nerves and arteries. The bleeding hides everything from view and you have to operate by blind reckoning, like a pilot lost in a cloud, until you have controlled the bleeding point.
