An Amazing Day - 2.5 hours sleep after 11am-4am technical set-up yesterday for the Medics' Panto, followed by 8am ward round with the Paediatric Neurosurgery. I asked the Registrar if I could come and he invited me to the 8am start. How could I refuse? It was worth it. If not just for the practical experience and explanation of symptoms, but also for the sense of encouragement.

The Consultant races cars in his spare time. He didn't decide to be a brain surgeon: he was offered the job when he was a generalist, and took it. One of his favourite quotes is by Voltaire: "the role of the doctor is to amuse the patient whilst nature takes its course." 

Today, he operated on a baby from the neonatal intensive care unit who had water on the brain. He snipped a tiny hole into the base of a fluid chamber within the brain. The Senior House Officer (SHO) made sure there was silence as the Consultant delicately avoided a key artery - without which the baby would die. Later, the SHO fitted an emergency drain in a comatose 2-year-old after he inserted a pressure monitor directly into the brain of a 12-year-old girl.  'It's not brain surgery,' he joked. It is.