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Another Day in the Frontal Lobe

Another Day in the Frontal Lobe

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Written by Katrina FirlikAuthor Alerts: Random House will alert you to new works by Katrina Firlik

  • Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
  • Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
  • On Sale: June 12, 2007
  • Price: $14.95
  • ISBN: 978-0-8129-7340-2 (0-8129-7340-2)
Also available as an eBook.
about this book

Katrina Firlik is a neurosurgeon, one of only two hundred or so women among the alpha males who dominate this high-pressure, high-prestige medical specialty. She is also a superbly gifted writer–witty, insightful, at once deeply humane and refreshingly wry. In Another Day in the Frontal Lobe, Dr. Firlik recounts how her background as a surgeon’s daughter with a strong stomach and a keen interest in the brain led her to this rarefied specialty, and she describes her challenging, atypical trek from medical student to fully qualified surgeon. Among Firlik’s more memorable cases: a young roofer who walked into the hospital with a three-inch-long barbed nail driven into his forehead, the result of an accident with his partner’s nail gun, and a sweet little seven-year-old boy whose untreated earache had become a raging, potentially fatal infection of the brain lining.

From OR narratives to thorny ethical questions, from the surprisingly primitive tools in a neurosurgeon’s kit to glimpses of future techniques like the “brain lift,” Firlik cracks open medicine’s most prestigious and secretive specialty. Candid, smart, clear-eyed, and unfailingly engaging, Another Day in the Frontal Lobe is a mesmerizing behind-the-scenes glimpse into a world of staggering scientific advancement, incredible competition, and incalculable rewards.