Review: Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh

4 stars for Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery by Henry Marsh.

I come to know of this book by chance. The title somehow grabs my attention and I know I must read the book.

This book is about medicine and neurosurgery, more than that, it is about life as a neurosurgeon.

Here, author Marsh reveals much of his inner thoughts and feelings:

• Why he is always a little anxious when waiting to operate and when operating, and why he has to affect a complete calm and confidence, something which he does not inwardly feel

• Why it is important for surgeons to radiate self confidence

• Why surgeons feel easily threatened by their own colleagues

• Why surgeons often disparage their colleagues and even give evidence against one another as expert witnesses.

• Why surgeons carry cemeteries within themselves

• Why medical decisions - whether to treat, how much to investigate - are often not clear-cut.

• Why health care costs are getting more and more expensive, running out of control.

• Why patients or their families have wholly unrealistic expectations of what medicine can achieve, and take it very ill if things go badly.

• Why doctors have to supress their natural empathy, to not learn but unlearn empathy.

• Why it is so remarkably difficult as a doctor to find the correct balance between compassion and detachment

• Why an awake craniotomy is recommended to remove tumour in the brain rather than with the patient asleep under a general anaesthetic, and how it is done

Food for thought.. what is the role of the doctor?

The role of the doctor is not just to save life at any cost, but also to reduce suffering.

If surgeons operate on everybody, without any regard to the probable outcome, they will create terrible suffering for some of the patients and even more so for their families.


Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Publication date: 1 Jan 2018

*** Favourite quote 1 ***

When you are feeling fit and well, it is relatively easy to entertain the fantasy of dying with dignity by taking your own life, as death is still remote.

*** Favourite quote 2 ***

... doctors deal with probabilities, not certainties. Sometimes, if you are to make the right decision, you have to accept that you might be wrong.

*** Favourite quote 3 ***

We have to choose between probabilities, not certainties, and that is difficult.

How probable is it that we will gain how many extra years of life, and what might the quality of those years be, if we submit ourselves to the pain and unpleasantness of treatment?

And what is the probability that the treatment will cause severe side effects that outweigh any possible benefits?

When we are young it is usually easy to decide – but when we are old, and reaching the end of our likely lifespan?

*** Favourite quote 4 ***

The only meaning of death is how I live my life now and what I will have to look back upon as I lie dying.

~ Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery
Henry Marsh

@}--->>--->>-----

Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical front line. There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. 

Following the publication of his celebrated New York Times bestseller Do No Harm, Marsh retired from his full-time job in England to work pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. In Admissions, he describes the difficulties of working in these troubled, impoverished countries and the further insights it has given him into the practice of medicine. 

Marsh also faces up to the burden of responsibility that can come with trying to reduce human suffering. Unearthing memories of his early days as a medical student and the experiences that shaped him as a young surgeon, he explores the difficulties of a profession that deals in probabilities rather than certainties and where the overwhelming urge to prolong life can come at a tragic cost for patients and those who love them. 

Reflecting on what forty years of handling the human brain has taught him, Marsh finds a different purpose in life as he approaches the end of his professional career and a fresh understanding of what matters to us all in the end.

*Blurb from Goodreads*

Add to:


Links to purchase: