‘To me, the human brain is not a bottled specimen or a picture or a concept; it is a living thing. It is beautiful and delicate but also dangerous. I can poke its soft surface, and it can burn me alive at the stake. There is simply nothing like it.’
At fifteen, a farm kid from one of Tasmania’s smallest towns decided he was going to be a neurosurgeon.
When the door to Medicine closed, he picked apples, played drums and kept pushing until he left an Alex-shaped hole in a wall and forced his way through. What waited on the other side was a world of near-vertical learning curves, massive egos and zero margin for error.
Alex Koefman takes us inside the hidden sanctuary of the operating room, revealing the strange and wondrous machinery of the human brain while asking what it costs to spend your life with your hands inside other people’s heads.
Deeply funny, profound and often surprising, Head Case reminds us that even in the most complex corners of medicine, humanity is the one skill no one can teach.
