Henry Marsh Posts

“Centaur” by Declan Murphy and Ami Rao

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

courage to change the things I can;

and wisdom to know the difference. 

“The Serenity Prayer” Declan Murphy would recite in school everyday.

 

On 4 May 1994 jockey Declan Murphy was fell down while racing and before he could get up he was kicked in the head by another horse. It has been termed as one of the biggest racing horse accidents ever. Internationally it was a disastrous weekend for the sports world. The day before the world had lost the legendary Formula1 racing driver Ayrton Senna and the day before that Roland Ratzenberger. Declan Murphy was the third sportsman to be injured in what was deemed to be a fatal fall.  He was so badly injured with his skull being fractured in twelve places. There is a vivid description of the course doctor placing Declan Murphy’s helmet and colours still dripping with his  blood in the middle of the room and all the horsemen watching on horror. Racing Post had even readied his obituary which they fortunately never published but only showed it to him once he recovered. Yet within eighteen months he was back riding and won a race!

A racehorse in full flight is a thing of beauty; an artist, an enigma. An elite athlete that bursts into life in a bid to perform. Every minute at full gallop, a thoroughbread pumps some 1,800 cubic litres of air in and out of its lungs. Its heart beats 250 times — nearly five beats a second — to pump 300 litres of blood around its body, all to achieve that singular goal: speed.

That day, the light shone on Jibereen. He was performing for me, one breath perfectly in time with one stride as he raced towards the finish, the organs in his body working together in exquisite harmony, pumping the oxygen from his lungs to his heart, from his heart to the muscles that powered his spectacular speed. 

And I felt it. At that moment, I felt it, like I had felt it my whole life. The spirit of the animal underneath me: the power and the pride, the swiftness and the strength, the majesty and the gentleness and the grace. 

I felt my horse. 

I was at one with it. 

I was a liminal being.

I was CENTAUR.

In a fabulous Afternoon  Edition Extra Declan Murphy described his “deep reluctance” to do this book. It was Ami Rao’s persuasiveness that won him over. He was hesitant to do Centaur as no one knew till he agreed to do this project that he had absolutely no memory of the four years prior to his accident. In the interview he adds graciously that it was “to her credit and to her brilliance really she regained her composure restructuring the period. She had determination. ”

Centaur is a book about sportsmanship. The grit and determination a sportsman has to win over and over again comes through very clearly. This is a book which does deal with the passion and single-minded focus of Declan to win every single race. A great example of his determination and putting mind over matter is the battered and bruised jockey at Cheltenham who insisted on going in for his race only to win it even though his valet Johnny Buckingham said Deccan looked as if he was on a “completely different planet”.  He may not have wanted to be a jockey but when he found himself one he was not going to be mediocre at it. He gave it all that it took and he did a fine job!
Centaur is an extraordinary account of fate and strong faith which are absolutely impossible to explain logically. Ami Rao may recount what occurred but why it happened the way it did can never be comprehended by a logical human brain.  It’s best to go with the flow and appreciate the sequence of events and in the miracle of life.
Renowned brain surgeon Henry Marsh said in his though-provoking memoir  Admissions: A Life in Brain Surgery   “The brain cannot feel pain:  pain is a sensation created within the brain in response to electrochemical signals to it from the nerve endings in the body. …Thought and feeling,  and pain,  are all physical processes going on within our brains.  There is no reason why pain caused by injury to the body to which the brain is connected should be any more painful,  or any more ‘real’,  than pain generated by the brain itself without any external stimulus from the body…. The dualism of seeing mind and matter as separate entities is deeply ingrained in us,  as is the belief in an immaterial  soul which will somehow outlive our bodies and brains. “
Centaur is full of hope and the writing style is so refreshing — probably because both Declan Murphy and Ami Rao are writing straight from the heart that the narrative style does not follow any predictable structure. No wonder the book is being lauded and made it even to the Sunday Times Bestseller List.
Read Centaur.
Declan Murphy and Ami Rao Centaur Doubleday, Transworld Publishers, Penguin Random House, London, 2017. Pb. pp. 308 

22 July 2017

Henry Marsh’s “Admissions”

The  brain cannot feel pain:  pain is a sensation created within the brain in response to  electrochemical signals to it from the nerve endings in the body. …Thought and feeling, and pain, are all physical processes going on within our brains. There is no reason why pain caused by injury to the body to which the brain is connected should be any more painful, or any more ‘real’, than pain generated by the brain itself without any external stimulus from the body…. The dualism of seeing  mind and  matter as separate entities is deeply ingrained in us, as is the belief in an immaterial #soul which will somehow outlive our bodies and brains.

Well-recognised brain surgeon Henry Marsh’s memoir Admissions is immensely readable while being thought provoking. It explores that fuzzy space which can put many an experienced medical professional whether to be true to their Hippocratic oath or let their patient slip away with dignity.

When a surgeon advises a patient that they should undergo surgery, he or she is implicitly saying that the risks of surgery are less than those of not having the operation. And yet nothing is certain in medicine and we have to balance one set of probabilities against another, and rarely, if ever, one certainty against another. This involves judgement as much as knowledge. 

The book also documents Henry Marsh’s experiences as a consultant surgeon in Nepal and Ukraine. Two countries where given the lack of medical facilities would result in patients arriving for consultation when it was far too late or were considered to be cases found only in textbook — an experience many doctors from the developed world remark upon about developing nations.

Henry Marsh’s  Admissions: Life in Brain Surgery was written after he retired from active surgery and was able to reflect upon his life’s achievements as well as explore the philosophical aspect of his actions as a brain surgeon. Many times it was like walking a tight rope, particularly in modern medical practice, where the costs and profits were constantly being factored into a new admission. It did not matter if the patient was critical or not. The costs incurred in treating a sick person were first calculated before moving ahead. This was a far cry from the days when he began practising as a surgeon. He never articulates it but there is a pall of gloom that hangs over the memoir especially when he ruefully shares his distress at the extraneous financial factors they have to take into account before getting to the actual work of treating a patient.

Admissions is a disquieting but an essential memoir that is impossible to finish reading for it leaves one much to think about and query life as never before.

Henry Marsh   Admissions: Life in Brain Surgery Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of Orion Publishing, Hachette India, 2017. Pb. pp. 272 Rs 599 

26 June 2017 

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