I Guess I'll Never Be A Brain Surgeon

In my second last year of high school, my fellow learners and I were all told to write down what we'd like to go and study, or become, and then give it to our guidance teacher. This was the start of the great trek towards career choice, a beginning point from which our teachers would work to try and encourage us or guide us into something that would suit our personalities and intellect, something that would hopefully keep us happy for years to come. I, predictably, wrote down 'Medicine'. I was in a not-so-exclusive all-girls school, and the things those seventeen year old girls thought they wanted to become were the things seventeen year-old-girls all over the world want to become these days, I guess. As opposed to the girls of yesteryear, who supposedly dreamt about handsome husbands, oodles of children and the most stylish apron/oven gloves combo, the girls of my day dream about meteoric careers, fame, grandeur, and adoration. They imagine world domination, or world revolution at the very least, and as such many of my classmates wrote down careers they thought would help them to attain these goals. One of these careers was 'Neurosurgeon'.

It's a pity that many of the girls who wanted to specialise in brain surgery gave the guidance teacher little slips of paper that said 'Nurosurgen', 'Nuerosugoen', or 'Nerosergin'. It was also a shame that many of them didn't realise you had to study medicine first. 'Oh!' they would exclaim. 'I don't want to waste time becoming an ordinary doctor! I just want to save people with brain tumours!' I'm not really sure what most of those girls are doing now, but none of them are in my class. I guess the road to career nirvana via the human brain was just a little too long for them.

I don't know what the huge fuss about neurosurgeons is anyway. Granted, I've only met five, maybe six in my life, and they're all busy working at the hospital I'm currently rotating at. But I really don't think their field is more fantastic or admirable than that of many other specialties. Yes, they know an awful lot about the brain, but gynaes know an awful lot about the uterus, and take about the same amount of time to accumulate their knowledge. Yes, a neurosurgeon can drill a hole in your head and save your life, but a gynae can slice through your abdomen to save it as well. Why is one more admirable than the other?

I suppose it's the way we feel about that part of our body we call the brain - whilst we may still ramble on romantically about what we feel in our hearts, we all know that our souls are really kept in our heads, that we rely on the upstairs room and its contents for all that we are and know and believe in. The uterus is an organ that has many emotions attached to it for many years, but after it is no longer useful we lose our attachment to it. Whilst the neurosurgeon is fidgeting with something we want intact till the day we die, a gynae is just cutting something out that we don't really need anymore anyway.

I can't say I've been more impressed by the neurosurgeons at my hospital than I have by the doctors in any other specialty. To start off with, they tend to be arrogant, and their arrogance is proportionate to the number of years they've spent as neurosurgeons. They use their specialty as an excuse for everything. We had to have our exam moved a day earlier next week, to a Wednesday, and when discussing this with the chief consultant, he shrieked at me 'It can't be done! I won't allow it! We can't do exams on a Wednesday - we're neurosurgeons!' Mmmmmkay... so brain surgeons don't do exams on Wednesdays then. In addition to these offences, they're super-nerdy - so far the dorkiest department in the personal opinions of Anria and myself - they contribute heavily to the members of the Ugly Jersey Club*, and make us cringe by punching the air and yelling 'Jis, it's just so freaking cool!' when describing the flow of CSF through the central nervous system.

Maybe I'm just jealous that I know I don't have it in me to ever become a neurosurgeon - the ridiculous hours, the high mortality, the even higher morbidity... It's not for me. Maybe I'm getting extra-sour as the final, final countdown starts (eight days left!). And yes, maybe I'm generalising: I'm sure not all neurosurgeons are like the six I know. In fact, not all of the six I know are that bad - two of them are actually marvellous. But, you know, this week in neurosurgery wasn't a great one, and I'm really glad tomorrow's the last day. I won't miss that depressing ICU with all its comatose patients gasping through holes in their throats, and nor will I miss the reg who rolls his eyes when I can't rattle off dermatomes at the speed of light. As far as neurosurgery goes, I'm able to spot a problem, resuscitate and stabilise, and I'm able to refer, and that's about as far as I'm going to go.

*Hi, Smith!