When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery

by Frank Vertosick Jr. MD

Overview

The story of one man's evolution from naive and ambitious young intern to world-class neurosurgeon.

With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain, a young man struck down in his prime by paraplegia, and a minister with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull. Told through intimate portraits of Vertosick’s patients and unsparing yet fascinatingly detailed descriptions of surgical procedures, When the Air Hits Your Brain—the culmination of decades spent struggling to learn an unforgiving craft—illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393344028
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/20/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	142,413
File size:	741 KB

About the Author

Frank Vertosick Jr., MD, is the author of Why We Hurt and When the Air Hits Your Brain. He retired from surgery due to Parkinson’s disease in 2002, but he still treats office patients in Washington, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Introduction     11
The Rules of the Game     21
Slackers, Keeners, and Wild Cards     25
Thanks for Everything     45
A Night in the Street, a Night in the Chair     55
The Museum of Pain     70
Ailments Untreatable     94
Surgical Psychopaths     114
If It Was Easy, Everyone Would Do It     144
A Bit of Hard Cheese     168
Rebecca     188
Nightmares, Past and Future     209
The Wheel of Life     226
Belonging     250
Postscript     269

Editorial Reviews

"Dr. Frank Vertosick provides an amusing, insightful and honest inside view of the training of the neurosurgeon. This highly readable account of daily life on the wards shows all the humility, fortitude, and humanity that genuinely underlies this sometimes not well-understood but genuinely wonderful profession."

Dr. David W. Roberts

"Dramatic, moving, and utterly fascinating."

New York Times Book Review

"When the Air Hits Your Brain lets you feel the pain, grief and joy of practicing medicine. This book should be read by every medical student, doctor and present or potential patient. In other words, by all of us."

Dr. Bernie Siegel

"By turns comic and tragic, this memoir…is a must-read for neurosurgeons but also of interest to most clinicians."

The BMJ - Chris Barrett