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278 pages, Hardcover
First published March 13, 2014
“Where is Caroline?” I asked as I arrived at the x-ray reception desk, a little out of breath.Fuckoff45 doesn’t work and neither does any other permeation Marsh tries. He runs back to the imaging department and convinces Caroline to accompany him back to the consultation room. FuckOff47 finally does the job. By then, the patients are almost vibrating with anxiety, his clinic is running 45 minutes late, and it’s not even 10:00 yet.
“Well, she’s about somewhere,” came the reply.
So I headed off round the department and eventually I found her and explained the problem.
“Have you tried your password?”
“Yes, I bloody well have!”
“Well, try Mr. Johnsons. That usually works. Fuckoff45. He hates computers.”
“Why 45?”
“It’s the 45th month since we signed on to that hospital system and one has to change the password every month,” Caroline replied.
So I ran down the corridor and down the stairs and past the waiting patients back to the consultation room.”
“Life without hope is hopelessly difficult but at the end hope can so easily make fools of us all.”
I am looking directly into the center of the brain, a secret and mysterious area where all the most vital functions that keep us conscious and alive are to be found. Above me, like the great arches of a cathedral roof, are the deep veins of the brain – the Internal Cerebral Veins and beyond them the basal veins of Rosenthal and the in the midline the Great Vein of Galen, dark blue and glittering in the light of the microscope. This is anatomy that inspires awe in neurosurgeons.
Are the thoughts that I am thinking as I look at this solid lump of fatty protein covered in blood vessels really made out of the same stuff? And the answer always comes back – they are – and the thought itself is too crazy, too incomprehensible, and I get on with the operation.
"If the operation succeeds the surgeon is a hero, but if it fails he is a villain"
"Perhaps they never quite realized just how dangerous the operation had been and how lucky they were to have recovered so well. Whereas the surgeon, for a while, has known heaven, having come very close to hell"