All That Moves Us

April 15, 2022
A compelling look into the life of a pediatric neurosurgeon. Memoirs by neurosurgeons is a growing genre, with at least half a dozen notable books in print, including Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, one of the best medical memoirs ever. Although not in Marsh's class, this book by Wellons, professor of neurological surgery, pediatrics, radiology, and other specialties at Vanderbilt Medical Center, is an engaging entry. The author provides vivid, often gruesomely detailed chronicles of his procedures, most of which turn out well. Like most neurosurgeons, Wellons was bright and ambitious, and he did not enter medical school yearning for this career but made up his mind before graduation. "Every time I would walk past the neurosurgery oper-ating room," he writes, "I would stop and look inside to see what they were doing....One hundred percent of the time I would stand on my tiptoes to peek in through the little square window in the door." His training--surgery, then neurosurgery, then a fellowship in pediatric neurosurgery--was grueling, but this is not the author's main concern. Nearly all fellow residents, teachers, and colleagues that Wellons describes are likable and competent, and he offers few specific opinions about the American medical system. More than anything, he tells interesting stories--e.g., traveling with his team to Australia to perform that nation's first operation on a pregnant woman's fetus to correct its spinal cord; treating an adolescent who suffered catastrophic brain damage after a suicide attempt with her policeman father's service revolver; witnessing a terrible auto accident, rushing to assist, instructing bystanders on the proper first aid, and, ultimately, saving multiple lives. Wellons also recounts his first mistake: After saving the life of an 11-year-old with a brain infection, he discovered that he left two rubber bands inside the patient. Thankfully, he was able to remove them during the next procedure. A dramatic narrative inside and outside the operating room.

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Starred review from April 18, 2022
Wellons, chief of the division of pediatric neurosurgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, shares in his powerful and intimate debut his stories of “remarkable children and our journeys together.” There’s Alyssa, a bullied teen who attempted suicide with her sheriff father’s service revolver and whose mother learned of the incident because she worked at the 911 dispatch center. Permanently blinded by the gunshot, Alyssa and her parents insisted that Wellons tell her story, “so that people might understand that social bullying is real.” Leonard, meanwhile, an eight-year-old who lost muscle function after a space heater explosion, asked Wellons pre-op for “the whole miracle” despite the surgery’s risks: the procedure was a success. In another tense episode, Wellons operated on a baby born three months early. His patients are the centerpieces of each chapter, and together these accounts make for an awe-inspiring look at their resilience rather than of his obvious surgical skills; indeed, a friend had warned him that “neurosurgeons are... egotistical,” but in these pages Wellons steers well clear of that. His writing is top-tier and consistently breathtaking: “For the child, it was simply a chance to heal and live; theirs is the most innocent view. I hurt; now I hurt no longer.” Medical memoirs don’t come much better than this.