I gradually regained my courage and used what I had learned from the tragic consequences of my hubris to achieve much better results with tumours of this kind. I would, if necessary, operate in stages over several weeks, I would operate with a colleague, taking the operating in turns with an hour on and an hour off, like drivers in a military convoy. I would not try to remove all of the tumour if it looked as though it would be particularly difficult. I would rarely let an operation take longer than seven or eight hours.
