Beth wanted me to be a cardiac surgeon,” Westaby writes, complex surgery out of his reach today because of a distorted hand caused by Dupuytren’s contracture. “And I didn’t disappoint her. I was good at it.” Not everyone with the mutated FMR1 gene has symptoms of Fragile X syndrome, because the body may still be able to make FMRP. A few things affect how much FMRP the body can make: I read this pretty much in one sitting - an incredibly emotional, informative and really very addictive memoir here from Stephen Westaby, I now know more about the human heart than I ever could imagine that I would. If you need to work on or access a fragile roof or surface, no matter how short the duration, you must plan and manage the work to ensure it’s done safely.

Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on

While loss and contriteness are inevitable, a majority of the book still revolves around miracles—patients rescued from the edge of the cliff by sheer ingenuity and assiduousness. To be able to wield the scalpel with confidence and dexterity takes years of practice and hard work, but it also takes a little bit of flair and a lot of courage to try new things. Westaby’s admirable propensity for innovation is embodied in his invention of the Westaby tube to treat a patient with a severely damaged windpipe, as well as his willingness to experiment with new devices and heart pumps. This reminds me of the Atul Gawande’s book, Better, in which he extols the spirit of never giving up on patients. Perfection can be an elusive target, but our patients deserve the best chance at life. It is for them that we must keep striving towards that fabled asymptote called perfection.Although the surgery details are not for the squeamish, I found them riveting. Westaby conveys a keen sense of the adrenaline rush a surgeon gets while operating with the Grim Reaper looking on. I am not a little envious of all that Westaby has achieved: not just saving the occasional life despite his high-mortality field – as if that weren’t enough – but also pioneering various artificial heart solutions and a tracheal bypass tube that’s named after him. The most moving part of the entire episode is not how Westaby tried to save a child with a rare condition, but rather the emotional attachment he felt—the irrepressible yearning to save a tiny life that meant that world to someone else. If the boy died, his mother would have no one else to turn to; she would be left utterly alone, with only her grief and misery for accompaniment. How could life be so cruel? She was still so youthful, “stunningly beautiful”, with years ahead of her. And the boy, even more. Reading this made my heart throb because it all felt so unjust, so sad, that this life should be taken away. The failure to save both of them from tragedy left Westaby in a forlorn state. As all surgeons must, he moved on to save other lives, but the haunting image of the girl carrying a bundle of rags never left him. In general, there are three options for the classroom placement of a child with Fragile X, based on that child’s specific abilities and needs:

Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life [PDF] [EPUB] Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life

This book shines a light on how harsh the "postcode lottery" can be. Westaby raised charitable funds to help patients in his Oxford hospital and he also had the expertise there, something a lot of hospitals just don't have, not through any fault of their own. Despite Oxford being a centre of excellence for heart surgery, they were not a transplant centre and therefore they got no NHS funding for the very pumps Westaby had trailblazed. He might be able to fix you, but the device he needed just wasn't always available. This is an incredible compilation. I'm not sure why, but with medicine, despite the fact that you lose more patients than you can save, it's those few survivors that give you the ability to persevere. They make it all matter. It doesn't matter how smart you are, you just need to be smart enough to care more than others, to be more passionate than others. It's tragic that a healthcare system is in the hands of political leaders who usually don't know enough about the preciousness of human life. Its not just the NHS, its a lot of countries' healthcare systems. Its tragic because lives are lost when support was needed. Death and a surgeons determined walk away from the table is truly a sight to see. In this case it’s British Cardiac Surgeon Stephen Westaby. Reading Open Heart: A Cardiac Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table takes us to the discovery of a little baby with a congenital hole in its heart and how “nascentes morimur” applies. Fragile X syndrome is the most common form of inherited intellectual and developmental disability (IDD).An incredible memoir from one of the world’s most eminent heart surgeons, recalling some of the most remarkable and poignant cases he’s worked on. The bureaucracy/politics of the medical system baffled me on more than one occasion. I shared Westaby's frustrations with it all and wanted to shake these people till common sense popped in their heads. (As my one friend said before... "This is why some people are frustrated with and/or hate the Health profession") Some children with Fragile X begin talking later than typically developing children. Most will talk eventually, but a few might stay nonverbal throughout their lives. The title sums it up pretty well. A collection of anecdotes from the author's colourful and accomplished life in the field of cardiothoracic surgery.