Reviews - When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery

205 reviews for:

When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery

Frank T. Vertosick Jr.

4.16 AVERAGE

canibefictionaltoo's review against another edition

4.5

When the Air Hits Your Brain is not about the technology, it isn’t even really about the medicine. It’s about the human aspect of disease, the human dimension of those who suffer from it, and the human dimension of those neophytes, like me, who learn to treat it. And that dimension is timeless.

I enjoyed reading this book much more than I was expecting to!
The first half of this book was more about surgery as a whole and how Dr. Vertosick ended up becoming a neurosurgeon (because that wasn't his initial plan) but the second half was more about anectodes and felt like your senior telling you crazy stories from their life.
Something about his narrative felt very genuine to me, the empathy he holds for each patient. Those stories really touched me.
I also loved the way he talks about death and cancer. It was fascinating to read about. Lots of quotes to post from this book.

Highly recommend if you're interested.

Failure instructs better than success. A single death shapes the surgeon’s psyche in a way that fifty “saves” cannot.

skz0424's review against another edition

5.0

I devoured this book. The stories were both heartbreaking and heartwarming. The woman with brain cancer but who was also pregnant made me cry. And the baby with hydrocephaly that was basically abandoned. But then there were the happy stories of catching and curing conditions that were thought untreatable. We good, quick read.