What It's Like To Be...

A Brain Surgeon


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Zapping parts of the brain to know where to cut, operating a mouth-controlled microscope that's worth more than a house, and carrying the weight of life-or-death decisions with Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, a brain surgeon at the Mayo Clinic. How do you preserve a mathematician's expertise when removing tumors? And how did he go from picking tomatoes to performing brain surgery?

Dr. Q wrote about his remarkable journey to the operating room in the book, Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon.

He was also featured in the Netflix documentary series The Surgeon’s Cut.

Got a comment or suggestion? Email us at [email protected]

Want to be on the show? Leave us a voicemail at (919) 213-0456. We’ll ask you to answer two questions:

  • What’s a word or phrase that only someone from your profession would be likely to know and what does it mean?
  • What’s a specific story you tell your friends that happened on the job? It could be funny, sad, anxiety-making, pride-inducing or otherwise.

We can’t respond to every message, but we do listen to all of them! We’ll follow up if it's a good fit.

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What It's Like To Be...By Dan Heath

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