There are days when I open the clinic schedule and notice a name that did not arrive. The appointment is listed, the door is open, but the chair stays empty.
We often stare at MRI images searching for answers. Yet the image reveals only anatomy. It shows the shape of bones, ligaments, and nerves, but not necessarily how they function.
At night, after all consultations and surgeries have ended, only the cool black-and-white cross-sections remain on the clinic monitor. In this hour, cleared of the day’s bustle, I face the anatomical structures within the images in absolute solitude.
A fellow's first lead case taught a lesson no textbook had. On technique, timing, and what surgery cannot undo.
A patient's first question on the day after surgery is rarely about the angled instrument that reached behind the lamina, or the precise plane of dissection that spared the descending nerve root.