Another Day in the Frontal Lobe

March 27, 2006
The brain is my business," says Connecticut neurosurgeon Firlik. "Many of the brains I encounter have been pushed around by tumors, blood clots, infections, or strokes that have swollen out of control. Some have been invaded by bullets, nails, or even maggots." In these pages, a carpenter with a nail in his left frontal lobe goes home within a day of surgery; a boy develops a raging bacterial meningitis because his New Age mother gave him herbs instead of antibiotics for a routine ear infection; and an infant with hydranencephaly looks cute despite the absence of brain matter in his skull. Along the way, Firlik muses that a healthy brain has the consistency of soft tofu, and she flies solo in the OR for the first time as she saves an 18-year-old victim of a car accident who didn't buckle up. A woman in a male-dominated specialty, Firlik doesn't get worked up over minor things that can be construed as sexist; she finds that handling a patient's anxiety can be more complicated than the surgery itself, and she expects to be sued someday for malpractice. This witty and lucid first book demythologizes a complex medical specialty for those of us who aren't brain surgeons.

Starred review from May 1, 2006
Firlik (Yale Univ. Sch. of Medicine) bases this engrossing book on her seven years of neurosurgery residency training. While acknowledging that -the human brain is a refined, complex, and mysterious system, - she simplifies her presentations so that lay readers are dramatically drawn into brains that have been -pushed around by tumors, blood clots, infections, or strokes...and some that have been invaded by bullets, nails, or even maggots. - Firlik engagingly writes about her background and the influences that led her -one of only about 200 women -to pursue a career in the male-dominated, high-pressure specialty of brain surgery. She exhibits a becoming modesty when discussing how brain surgery is reliant on tools, manual dexterity, routines, and a gifted support staff. Readers are grounded in the surgical culture and the mechanics, risks, emotions, and sacrifices a brain surgeon faces and masters to become a professional. In the end, it doesn't take a brain surgeon to learn a lot of neuroscience from Firlik's vivid images and humanistic prose style. Highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 1/06.]" -James Swanton, Harlem Hosp. Lib., NY"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2006
It doesn't take a brain surgeon to wonder what it's like to poke around beneath somebody's cranium. It does take a brain surgeon, however, to explain what makes a person " want "to drill into another person's skull. At that Firlik excels in her sometimes grisly, sometimes amusing (in a dark-humorous way), always informative, personal (father was a surgeon), and professional ("part scientist, part mechanic") story of becoming a neurosurgeon. In many ways she is what you might expect, but in others she is the rarest of the rare. There are a mere 4,500 neurosurgeons in the U.S., and a scant 5 percent of them are women. While Firlik has had some of the predictable and standard hassles and worries (what to wear to a job interview?), she has never had to storm out of a room because of male chauvinism. From a day-in-the-life sketch of a neurosurgery residency to an astonishing report on a performance-enhancing procedure to improve brain function, Firlik maintains a highly personal and engaging style.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)