Life lessons from a neurosurgeon5/19/2023 Marsh is nonetheless fierce on himself throughout the book, as critical as he is of the arrogance of his profession. “Well, I quite understand, Mr Marsh,” the patient answers after a long silence. On one occasion he steels himself to admit to a patient that he’d operated on the wrong side of his brain. Here, Marsh is self-lacerating and also self-forgiving when he reminisces about his medical mistakes. Divided into parts like a three-act play, it is often darkly funny, especially in the first act, Denial. Sometimes, though, he confesses to paralysing anxiety – a result of his approach towards serious problems that his wife, Kate, calls “therapeutic catastrophising”.ĭespite its subject this is not a maudlin book far from it. It’s befitting as Marsh reflects on his own mortality after a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer. The memoir’s subtitle and celestial cover design allude to the 1946 Powell and Pressburger film, A Matter of Life and Death. Along the way the 72-year-old author wrestles with the dilemma of becoming a patient himself. Philosophical and scientific conundrums about brain surgery permeate the book: to treat or not to treat patients how honest to be in giving a prognosis euthanasia v assisted dying. This latest autumnal instalment follows in the same vein.
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