My longstanding love for neuroscience began in high school when I participated in the Brain Bee. Akin to the spelling bee, this competition was geared towards the nervous system, from anatomy to imaging and disease. After spending time in a neurobiology lab and obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, as I began medical school, I knew would pursue a neuro-related profession.
In medical school, I fell in love with neurosurgery for several reasons: I enjoyed f using my hands to fix a problem especially in such vital territories that govern thought and function. Furthermore, I found the meaningful impact neurosurgeons make on the lives of critically ill patients to be most rewarding. This became strikingly apparent during my neurosurgery sub-internship.
I witnessed many trauma cases that week at our local community hospital in Santa Clara. Among them, a chronic subdural was particularly memorable. It was my first night on call. We were closing the last scheduled case of the day when an emergent subdural hematoma evacuation was taking place. When I entered the operating room, I saw a somnolent 75-year-old man who had hit his head during a fall two weeks prior.
We solemnly scrubbed in. The size of the incision and speed at which we reached bone starkly contrasted with the minimalistic, deliberate exposure of the microsurgical cases I had seen earlier that week. I irrigated during the craniotomy, aware that the blood collection was lurking just beneath. When the bone flap was removed, I had a panoramic view of the moss-like sticky green membranes.
We performed several rounds of irrigation followed by drain placement and closure. The next morning on rounds, it was incredible to see the patient awake and interactive – literally a night and day difference from his previous state. He and his family were very grateful to our team. I too felt a sense of gratitude that we made it in time, that I could be a part of this patient’s care, and that I was surrounded by such inspiring role models and mentors on the rotation.
This experience left a deep impression on me for many reasons: my first overnight call, the urgency of the case, seeing the pathology firsthand, and most of all, the impact that the operation had on the patient’s life. I went home that day filled with admiration for the chief and attending, as well as a firm resolve towards a neurosurgical career. This feeling grew stronger with each subsequent exposure to the field over the next few months, whether a C7 to pelvis surgery for deformity, cavernoma resection, transsphenoidal case or Chiari decompression.
As a student, I was fortunate to witness the integration of technological advances into operative decision-making. Given my budding inclination towards vascular cases, I especially marveled at indocyanine green video angiography and the array of endovascular devices used in the cath lab. Each experience highlighted how neurosurgery is constantly evolving, incorporating innovations that improve patient outcomes. I look forward to the day when computational analysis of neuroimaging for cerebrovascular disease translates into routine patient care.
