Chapter 1: Operating Room
Even though he had performed the operation hundreds of times before, the Chief of Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center hesitated at this crucial moment, with his microdissector poised to slice off yet another child’s pituitary.
Here it proudly stood, the so-called master gland, the one organ in the human body that charted the destiny of its host, and the surgeon was about to remove it in an unnatural act that would forever change the course of this boy’s future.
How ironic, the doctor thought, that nature—or God—would place it here, so easily accessible to artificial manipulation, and so perfectly separated from the rest of the brain’s critical structures.
It seemed almost too easy to remove the body’s definitive organ for regulating growth and aging, then replace it with synthetic hormones designed to mimic these natural effects. He didn’t even have to slice open the protective casing of the cranium; the gland could be unobtrusively reached through the nostrils via the natural portal of the sinus cavity, which led directly to the base of the brain.
Funny how only the human mind could figure out how to reconfigure the human brain.
He could see it clearly now, illuminated by the endoscope’s bright flashlight, shining in the open cavern of the patient’s nasal sella, like a ripe fruit hanging from an apple tree. A tiny pink appendage, no bigger than a pea, connected by a thin stalk to the brain’s central processor, the hypothalamus.
“Richard?” The attending anesthesiologist suddenly interrupted the surgeon’s thoughts.
“I’m sure you’re marveling at the wondrous nature of the human nervous system and your almighty role in its ongoing evolution, but I think there’s a patient here who'd prefer you stop playing God for a moment and resume your responsibility as a surgeon!”
There were few people who could talk so candidly to the brilliant and celebrated Dr. Richard Ross, Harvard-educated Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at NYU School of Medicine, and Surgeon-General of the United Nations. But Dr. George ‘Mac’ McAllister, Chief Anesthesiologist at Mt. Sinai, had been through so many of these life-altering hypophysectomy operations with Dr. Ross that he had earned the surgeon’s respect—and friendship.
“I’m just making sure we remove the right part of this lad’s brain,” Rick joked without looking up. “I have a feeling he might want to keep the important parts.”
“Uh huh,” Mac replied dubiously, “as if you’re the slightest bit uncertain at this particular moment.”
The anesthesiologist had a point. The magnetic resonance imaging equipment surrounding the patient’s head provided three hundred and sixty degree visibility of the entire lower brain cavity, clearly visible on a bank of monitors mere inches from Rick’s keenly scanning eyes. And the tiny flexible penlight snaked carefully up the boy’s left nostril into the sphenoidal sinus gave an unmistakably clear and close-up view of the specific organ in question.
