two: confessions of a brain surgery dropout
[first published December 2009]
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — ‘Marky’ Mark Twain
One day in October, when I was well-rested and thinking clearly for the first time in 3 months (i.e., on vacation from neurosurgery residency), I realized something important: I’m most passionate about research, not clinical medicine.
AND, although I was given the generous opportunity to start my own mini-lab at Cedars to follow up on my recent exciting brain tumor findings (http://is.gd/4xNkE), I was becoming disillusioned with the reality of the clinical situation: I would be training for 90 hrs/week for the next 7 to 9 years only to have every single one of my brain cancer patients die within months REGARDLESS OF WHAT I COULD OFFER THEM.
It’s no wonder (besides the 7 figure income) 87% of neurosurgeons are spine specialists and less than 2% focus on tumors. Luckily, I hate spine surgery. It also sheds light on why, during the interview trail last year, more than one faculty member exclaimed, “But you’re GOOD at research, why would you want to become a neurosurgeon?!?”
Eventually it became difficult to deny the fact that if I devoted those same 7 to 9 years to the lab instead of “paying my dues” on the wards I could make a much bigger impact on this field.
So, I went rogue.
At age 35, at time when most of my friends are enjoying their family lives, 7 figure homes, and stable careers, I resigned from my neurosurgery residency (which I’ve worked towards for 15 years) and am now among the most overqualified of the unemployed. Next stop... research domination. There, I can fully flex my scientific skills to realize my vision: improve outcomes by finding more effective treatments for cancer patients… to dedicate my career to pursuing those questions that neurosurgery currently has no answers for.
It is ironic that a passage I read in my own Chairman’s new book that October morning was the final gust that set me off on this new course:
“In the end, it will be the science, not the scalpel, that wins the war against this vexing adversary [malignant brain tumors].” —Dr. Keith Black in “Brain Surgeon”
So, no, it’s not brain surgery (it’s harder)! Wish me bon voyage.