Seeking Perfection
good morning everybody
my topic for today is seeking perfection
and how apt it could be but let me
ponder on this very first slide
you may have noticed that i have placed
sun
way up front we must all remember
that we are a son or a daughter to our
parents
a husband or a wife to our spouse
a father or a mother to our children
i have a son and a teacher which i put
on the same line
because we must give to the future and
unless we teach
we are not giving anything to the future
so therefore i prefer to call myself a
professor rather than a doctor
gratitude is the foremost virtue and i
must thank
people who are often taken for granted
first and foremost is my wife
anna paula she has not only helped me
with this presentation but also
with whatever i do even as a
neurosurgeon to become perfect
i should also like to mention a number
of friends but nadeem rice in particular
but i’d be failing in my duty if i did
not mention
two of my teachers of course all of them
matter from school from college
but two of my teachers who really helped
me to be where i am
professor das and professor rauth they
were heads of respective national
institutes of the country
perfection let’s try and look at it very
simply
it also means completeness you try and
do a job
and do it well done that’s all that is
required
for a small child when he learns his
first match
like for example two plus two is four
and he does that
time over and time over again precisely
the same answer
he is perfect at that so maturity
what is flawlessness not to make
mistakes that’s what neurosurgery is all
about
anyway supreme excellence
and when you have these under your belt
you’re often considered saintly
so they all have something in common
so let’s start with simple things if you
can do the simple things
there’s a good chance that you’ll be
able to do the more complicated things
and when you come across the more
complicated challenging things you break
them up
they’re like algorithms for the computer
they’re all broken up into small small
bits
so you achieve the small bits and then
you will be able to
achieve the bigger things so how do we
do the impossible
it’s not just to try you must try to do
your very best in the true sense of the
word
and you will succeed provided you have
no agenda
and we shall see that in the next few
minutes
there are many professions that demand
perfection the practice of medicine
is one such and neurosurgery is probably
at its top
let me share with you some true life
experiences
to indicate what we do on a daily basis
this is a young registrar’s mother
who was suffering from a massive
pituitary adenoma and she
lost her vision all of a sudden
i got a frantic call on a sunday morning
when i was at a busy cme
where i was in fact sharing the session
and i had to leave because
the registrar was frantic saying my
mother has lost vision
she was very diabetic as well she had
sugars to be controlled she was obese so
it was not
easy for us to just take the patient
and immediately operate so we had to
really prime this patient which took a
couple of days
it’s no point trying to save vision and
losing life
so i operated her in a couple of days
and here she is
with vision restored the last i heard
was she was going
with her daughter for a movie so these
are the things that you hear
from our patients in neurosurgery let’s
look at another case
a basilar tip aneurysm where i was
called in to operate because this
patient bled in the brain
and my student who had gone to baroda
requested me to come
so i flew i had to fly immediately which
means i had to take the evening flight
and operated through the night i had to
take my micro instruments
and this surgery is difficult even in
our own surrounding at the km hospital
but
i had to do this in an alien surrounding
i didn’t know the sister
so so many parameters that were not
within my control
but yet i planned this surgery in my
mind
took the clips that i needed for the
surgery did the job in fact i used four
clips for the surgery
and came back the next morning to
continue duty at the km hospital
the patient did well let’s look at the
other case now
this is a case i operated 12 years ago
she has a huge dominant dominant means
on the left side on the dominant
hemisphere of the brain
a mortar strip that’s around the motor
area of the brain
a large arterial venous malformation
whereas consultants had said that this
was an inoperable case
but i could see this girl she was living
in my building for a while
deteriorated in front of my eyes she
started having weakness on one side of
the body
and then she started developing
seizures multiple seizures in fact she
had four or five
seizures every day by the time she came
up for surgery or
she she was ready for surgery because
the relatives are very very scared
she was practically bedridden
i started the surgery at five in the
evening after my day’s work at km
hospital
and i finished at 5 am the next morning
it took me 12 hours to get rid of this
huge
ball of blood in vessels
and after i did the surgery i settled
the patient in the icu
spoke to the relatives the parents of
the kid and said that everything will be
fine
and went to play a cricket match in fact
a time shield which i had committed to
play
and we could save his life
19 years old and i have a lump in my
throat
how do we do what we do so there are
multiple steps involved
the first is proper learning and
education this is where most of us
are being a teacher i still continue
to learn because i teach people and they
ask me the most difficult questions to
answer
so most students are at this stage but
remember
learning and education must be vast
you must gain immense knowledge like the
base of the pyramid this is your
foundation then mentorship and guidance
it’s extremely important to have a good
mentor
he mustn’t be the one who says you can’t
do this or you won’t do this
he should be able to guide you through
and this is the person or these are the
people who are going to give you the
wisdom and the skill
which will develop on the education that
you’ve had
at home you have a similar person as
well
and she’s your she’s your wife so most
men call that nagging
nevertheless practice makes you perfect
this is what was highlighted many years
ago
but now it is known that that is not
exactly what it is
there is more to it than just that yes
practice makes you perfect when
probables
are more standard and the conditions are
stable
for example like tennis as a sport would
be
probably better off as you keep seeing
roger federer practices backhand for
example
but it’s not the same in medicine in
fact it’s not at all
and same with cricket in fact
let’s look at the next step you
have something called cross training so
for an athlete
a cricketer might play a bit of football
so he develops other skills
whereas for a surgeon like me i play the
piano
or i play cricket or i think around with
the car or do carpentry so it
develops other skills in your ever
expanding brain cells
they expand by networking they keep on
networking it’s like what
so many other softwares do for us that
we network and then we expand but what
is also important is you must be
analytical
and you must observe and these skills
develop
only if you are honest if you are not
honest
i’m sorry you will go the wrong path
this is what i managed to do on the
cricket field i played veterans cricket
for india early this year
and these are some of my exploits when
i’m not in the operating room
probably the most important but would
come at the end
is the mind and how do you trigger
how do you manage to have the attitude a
person
needs to become perfect you need the
courage
you need the discipline you need the
determination you need
the respect you need temperament
commitment
and focus let me give you a simple
example of respect
if i’m playing a match i’m playing a
cricket match and i don’t respect the
bowler or i don’t respect the ball
and i try to hit a ball which is meant
to really actually get me out i should
defend it
i will lose my wicket i won’t be able to
do what i need to do
and i will we won’t be batting perfectly
so this is a small example and
everything can be dissected in the same
manner
let’s look at the last point which is
also extremely important
is the spirit it is the belief that you
carry
it’s not the spirit that you use or that
you that you consume
in the bar and the restaurants this
spirit
makes you the spiritual person that you
are that allows you to reach
for most people beyond the realism
of what you see in day-to-day life
this is just a slide i put for people
who don’t understand what the mind is
remember that it is all powerful and
it depends on how you want to use it
so therefore it shows neurosurgery a
field that merits perfection
and for me to forgive is humane
and to air is inhuman we indians here
from a country where generations of
people
performed with perfection and no agenda
simply look at ajanta and alora look at
those rock
caves or look at the paintings they’re
perfect
and they continue to be done by
generations 3000 years ago
this is neurosurgery today this is a
young lady who worked with me as a
secretary for four years she’s married
and got a kid
she underwent two surgeries on either
side of the head where we had to open
into the brain
and clip multiple aneurysms so this is
just to tell you what neurosurgery is
today and how one can be perfect
in day-to-day life as well thank you
stay safe and stay healthy