It was unlikely that she had more than a few months left to live whatever I did, but there is always hope, and there are always a few patients – sadly only a small minority – who are statistical outliers and defy the averages to live for several years. We had agreed that we should operate. Patrik did most of it, and I assisted him. The operation went well enough, though as soon as Patrik drilled open her head and cut through the meninges, we could see that the tumour was already spreading widely, more widely than in the brain scan done only two weeks earlier.
