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.

IF YOU LIKE THIS EPISODE: Check out what it's like to be a hospice nurse, a nurse, a veterinarian.

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