When the Air Hits Your Brain: Parables of Neurosurgery [Hardcover]

Frank T., Jr. Vertosick (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393038947 | ISBN-13: 978-0393038941 | Publication Date: January 1996 | Edition: 1St Edition

Told through intimate portraits of a neurosurgeon's patients, this book contains detailed descriptions of the surgical procedure in neurosurgery. It provides a poignant and often humorous account of the mysteries of the mind and the operating room.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For the patient, an operation is a single defining moment. For the neurosurgeon, each moment in the operating room represents the culmination of decades spent struggling to learn an unforgiving craft. When these two join there is drama, often too much of it. This book tells the story of Frank Vertosick's metamorphosis from naive intern to neurosurgeon through intimate portraits of his patients and nerve-jangling descriptions of surgical procedures. Riveting, poignant, and sometimes shockingly funny, When the Air Hits Your Brain is a remarkable account of the mysteries of the mind and the operating room.

From Publishers Weekly

Instead of offering a collection of bizarre medical cases, brain surgeon Vertosick presents a set of harrowing clinical tales that highlight neurosurgery as risky, messy and often frustrating. The result is a riveting report that shatters the mystique of the brain surgeon as a wizard of technical prowess. Many of the patients profiled here die-an outcome not representative of neurosurgery at large, the author reassures us. The cases are drawn from Vertosick's six years of internship and residency. Among the most memorable are Andy, a Down's syndrome sufferer with multiple head and neck abnormalities who chose euthanasia over a life imprisoned in bed. We also meet Sarah, a pregnant homemaker with a malignant brain tumor who refuses radiotherapy and a therapeutic abortion. Vertosick is associate chief of neurosurgery at Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 268 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1St Edition edition (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393038947
• ISBN-13: 978-0393038941
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #999,511 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The training of a Neurosurgeon, June 15, 2002

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: When the Air Hits Your Brain: Parables of Neurosurgery (Hardcover)

The author has an edgy, sleep-deprived, wisecrack-a-minute style that makes me glad some states, at least, have reduced the number of hours per week a medical resident must work, from one hundred to eighty. Neurosurgery is a very unforgiving craft, and not all of the stories in this book have a happy ending. Neurosurgeons must tackle some pretty hopeless cases, and the human brain is a very unforgiving operating theatre.

Nevertheless, "When the Air Hits Your Brain" is an unputdownable read. I've been through it twice now---once during a night where I couldn't sleep anyway. If you do intend to sleep, don't read it right before going to bed.

Here are the author's five rules for neurosurgery interns:

1. "You ain't never the same when the air hits your brain."
2. "The only minor operation is one that someone else is doing."
3. "If the patient isn't dead, you can always make him worse if you try hard enough."
4. "One look at the patient is better than a thousand phone calls from the nurse."
5. "Operating on the wrong patient or doing the wrong side of the body makes for a very bad day--always ask the patient what side their pain is on, which leg hurts, which hand is numb."

Emotionally, Dr. Vertosick's worst rotation was to the local Children's Hospital. A child who was born with an inoperable brain tumor is the focus of the chapter entitled "Rebecca."

A baby's brain is very hard to operate on: "At six weeks of age, the unmyelinated brain is thick soup which can be inadvertently vacuumed away by operative suctions. Moreover, nerves the thickness of pencil lead in adults are little more than a spider's web in a baby."

Dr. Vertosick doesn't spend the whole book wisecracking. He ends the chapter on Rebecca: "I am not particularly religious. In fact, the birth of children bearing cancers I find difficult to reconcile with a merciful God. Nevertheless, there must be someplace where Rebecca now laughs in the bright sunshine, finally free of her ventilator and gastrostomy."

Read how the author strays into the 'inferno of overconfidence' as a chief resident, and comes "perilously close to emotional incineration." Follow him into the operating room as a patient's brain oozes through his fingers, where he is squirted in the eye by an AIDS patient's spinal fluid, and where he cures a woman who was misdiagnosed as an Alzheimer's patient when what she really had was a brain tumor.

I'm in the process of donating all of my books to the library that I know I won't read again. "When the Air Hits Your Brain" is not one of the donations.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best medical story I have read---And I've read numerous, July 9, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: When the Air Hits Your Brain: Parables of Neurosurgery (Hardcover)

A compelling story of a physician's journey to become a neurosurgeon. I was engaged after the first paragraph, and had a hard time putting the book down thereafter. Vertosick's style is fluent, straightforward, and without the literary flare that so often clouds books. Within the two days that it took to read this book, I became medical student, patient and neurosurgeon. This was an experience that I shall remember 'til I die.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A nuerosurgeon's experiences; very interesting and readable, May 17, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: When the Air Hits Your Brain: Parables of Neurosurgery (Hardcover)

The author says the first rule of neurosurgey is "You're never the same once the air hits your brain." Full of the type of dark humor you would expect from medical profesisonals, this book chronicles the experiences of a neurosurgeon from his days as a medical student to his present day practice in Pittsburg. It is very well-written and is intended for the layman (my guess is that fans of the TV show "ER" would love this book). But be warned, emotionally it is a very hard book to read. Take for example the story of the woman who is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor while early in a pregancy. The author's story of her fight to live just long enough to deliver her child cannot help but reduce the reader to tears. The book also forces the reader to realize how quickly the body can betray and fail to function. It can be a scary realization when the neurosurgeon makes clear how quickly life can end. This book is an overlooked treasure. But keep your Kleenex close at hand, especially parents