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Admissions : life as a brain surgeon / Henry Marsh.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : {icador, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2017Description: xvi, 261 pages ; 22 cmISBN:
  • 9781250190024
Subject(s): Genre/Form: DDC classification:
  • 617.4/8092 B 23
Contents:
The lock-keeper's cottage -- London -- Nepal -- America -- Awake craniotomy -- the mind-brain problem -- An elephant ride -- Lawyers -- Making things -- Broken windows -- Memory -- Ukraine -- Sorry -- The red squirrel -- Neither the sun nor death.
Summary: Traces the author's post-retirement work as a surgeon and teacher in such remote areas as Nepal and Ukraine, illuminating the challenges of working in difficult regions and finding purposeful work after a career.
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Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Shelving location Call number Status Notes Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Phillipsburg Free Public Library Adult Non-Fiction Adult Non-Fiction 617.48092 MAR Available pap.ed 36748002428425
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The 2017 National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Finalist, International Bestseller, and a Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2017!

"Marsh has retired, which means he's taking a thorough inventory of his life. His reflections and recollections make Admissions an even more introspective memoir than his first, if such a thing is possible." -- The New York Times

"Disarmingly frank storytelling...his reflections on death and dying equal those in Atul Gawande's excellent Being Mortal ." -- The Economist

Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical frontline. 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.

The lock-keeper's cottage -- London -- Nepal -- America -- Awake craniotomy -- the mind-brain problem -- An elephant ride -- Lawyers -- Making things -- Broken windows -- Memory -- Ukraine -- Sorry -- The red squirrel -- Neither the sun nor death.

Traces the author's post-retirement work as a surgeon and teacher in such remote areas as Nepal and Ukraine, illuminating the challenges of working in difficult regions and finding purposeful work after a career.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

A retired British neurosurgeon delivers the follow-up to his well-received debut memoir, Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery (2015).The author's first book received rave reviews and sold well. While follow-ups to exceptional first books have a spotty record, readers who open Marsh's sophomore effort will quickly realize that they are in the hands of a master. Now retired, Marsh looks back over his life and career but mostly recounts his volunteer work in Nepal and Ukraine, extremely poor nations with abysmal medical care. He meticulously describes his successes but, as usual, feels more distress at failures. Ironically, these occur too often because the patients in these countries often believe that doctors can work miracles, so they often insist on surgery even after a careful explanation that it's unlikely to help. Operating on a cerebral hemorrhage or incurable brain tumor regularly converts a quick death to a slow, miserable one. American readers will note that this belies Marsh's statement that "only in America have I seen so much treatment devoted to so many people with such little chance of making a useful recovery." They will also learn of his admiration for American surgeons and his opinionwidely sharedthat because they are paid each time they operate, they do so too often. In all his travels, the only nation where the subject of payment has never arisen is Britain. Marsh justifiably rages against elected officials who could eliminate the National Health Service's most desperate need, money, by raising taxes but don't because it might endanger their chances of re-election. Another thoughtful, painful, utterly fascinating mixture of nut-and-bolts brain surgery with a compassionate, workaholic surgeon's view of medicine around the world and his own limitations. Readers will hope that a third volume is in the works. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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