Previously I wrote about Henry Marsh’s first book, which is an extraordinary account of cases from a neurosurgeon throughout his career and what he learnt about his life as a result that, you can read about that here.
Andy Legg introduced me to Marsh’s second book, which was published this year, called Admissions. If you want the amazon page you can find it here.
Sadly I don’t think it is quite as good a book as the first, but the first one is truly incredible and it doesn’t mean this bad. It jumps between what seems like the benal and the extraordinary stories of what it is like to be someone who works for neurosurgeon and the burden you have to bare in such a job.
In the early part of my career I was in the head and neck surgery training pathway, but it became quite clear that I was not fit for this because I simply do not have the ability to compartmentalise major events and major adverse events to allow me to continue to function in normal life. Some of the stories of Marsh’s career show just what type of personality you must have in order to exist in these types of surgical specialities. Some of the tales are harrowing. The most poignant and most wonderful part of the book is the later stages and the ending were he reflects on his own life and the fact that in truth it’s coming towards a close. He reflects on his ages and the effects its had on his body and the effect it has and will inevitably have on his mind, and reading between the lines the expectations of things that he should be able to and the disappointment of the fact that he cant do them anymore.
It struck me as odd again that the majority of people do not understand this until its too late. They give away some of the best years of there lives raising money or even just surviving in the hope that there will be a better place around the corner when they are older. Not taking into consideration the fact that when they are older they wont be able to do the things they could while they were slaving away. We should listen to people like Marsh much more often, but then perhaps when we are younger we just don’t have the ability to hear the message.
I suppose the final message that runs through both of Marsh’s books is the fact that he probably wasn’t a very nice guy, certainly not to his first wife and not to his family at times. Again shows me that it is almost impossible to reach the very pinnacle of almost any sort of career while maintaining any sense of normal, because the pinnacle of anything is not normal.
Blog Post Number - 1301