The Young Neurosurgeon

Lessons from My Patients

Paul Edward Kaloostian

• Publisher: UNM Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780826353528
• eBook ISBN: 9780826353535
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Medicine Biographies

In the ER, the OR, and in the waiting room where the doctors deliver heart stopping news to the families of their patients, a neurosurgeon's apprenticeship is arduous. This memoir of the day-to-day experiences of a resident in neurosurgery at one of the nation's busiest trauma centers provides a rare window into the training of the doctors who open patients' skulls and operate on their brains and spinal cords. Paul Kaloostian's intimate account describes both the lifesaving feats and tragic failures that are the daily ups and downs of twenty-firstcentury neurosurgery. Kaloostian shares the lessons of humility, faith, and compassion that were often more important than the surgical expertise he acquired in the operating room.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter One The Biopsy
• Chapter Two “You Win Some, You Lose Some”
• Chapter Three The Cowboy
• Chapter Four Running the List
• Chapter Five “I’m Gonna Be All Right?”
• Chapter Six “Doc, Who Are All These People?”
• Chapter Seven The Hand-Me-Down Wheelchair
• Chapter Eight “Communicate with Your Patients”
• Chapter Nine “I’m Fuckin’ Thirsty”
• Chapter Ten “I Like That Word Recovery”
• Chapter Eleven “I Want to Help in the Fight”
• Chapter Twelve The Smell of Death
• Chapter Thirteen “Doctor, with God Anything Is Possible”
• Chapter Fourteen “Don’t Cry, Sweetheart”
• Chapter Fifteen “Thank You for Giving Me My Life Back”
• Hippocratic Oath