A doctor’s inspiring encounters with mortality and miracles
Brain surgery is something that has fascinated me since I read Do No Harm by Henry Marsh. I read this book over Boxing Day, it is one of those that when I picked it up I had to keep reading, turning page after page entrapped.
Starting with a look back at his childhood that would in today’s world have you committed as a potential serial killer. Starting as child working on frogs, Keith documents a time when the rules and regulations were not so developed, where it was animals were often used in experimentation. Where you could progress through school more rapidly, become a qualified doctor in just 6 years.
Yet at this time with racism still showing its ugly head daily Keith talks about the struggle that the colour of his skin caused. It was not just about having the skills and qualifications of everyone else, but being held back and told you were not allowed. Just because of the color of the skin. Not just in medicine, but wanting to go swimming at the weekend, to the school you are allowed to go to.
Most neurosurgeons will just operate on the spine and nerves. Keith shares a unique insight into being one of a few that regularly operates on the brain. You get better the more you do, so within the neurosurgeons that operates on the brain there are some that just operate on brain tumours. This is a small club, and this book gives us an insight into this.
Keith shares his journey into the operating theatre. Starting with the heart and publishing some ground-breaking research in blood cells and the damage of artificial heart valves on these. Keith then becomes fascinated with the brain whilst at school. Through learning and going forward to operate on some of the most dangerous tumours Keith takes us on that journey.
Something that sets Keith aside is that it is not just the operating that he is passionate about. From his first research breakthrough with the heart Keith has gone on to discover multiple things. Some of the most significant being involving the blood-brain barrier, findings ways to deliver drugs (like chemotherapy) into brain tumours. Being able to use chemotherapy for brain tumours increases survival significantly.
The downside of being in America is the private commercial nature of medicine, the goal of making a profit. This for Keith did not give him the ability to research and make the difference that he wanted to. So Keith left the formal structure and moved to a non-profit which allowed him to develop his own institute of neurosurgery. Being able to do this allowed Keith to bring research and medicine together to develop new clinical trials.
Brain Surgeon is an inspiring story of how you can choose who you want to be, and how your choices can define you.
