Gifted Hands The Ben Carson Story (Chpts.19-22)

Gifted Hands
By: Ben Carson with Cecil Murphy
Pages: 194-224

• Summary

Ben Carson faces his biggest challenge yet. He has to perform surgery on Siamese twins separating them into two. When the mother of these twins found out she was pregnant she wanted to kill herself but when they were finally born she instantly loved them. She was tired of them not having their individuals lives and didn't want her babies to grow up as one. She longed to hold each of them separately. In preparation for this surgery the team had a 5 month training including Ben Carson going to Germany to study the brains of the twins. The surgery lasted for 22 hours. Throughout the surgery many difficulties happened. One was that the twins were losing a lot of blood and the team didn't have any blood left but then the American Red Cross came to give them some. Another difficulty was the fact that the twins' hearts had to be stopped so blood could stop flowing and the team only had one hour to keep the twins in this stage to complete the separation and the closing of the skull. There was a lot of pressure on Ben Carson and the team but he finished closing the skill in a matter of seconds before the hour ended. After the surgery the team that worked on the twins had a press conference because this surgery was very important. The twins were connected by the back of their heads and that's a difficult, almost impossible separation. The twins, Patrick and Benjamin, stayed in a coma for ten days. These 10 days were hard of the Hopkins team because they had no idea what was going to happen. However the twins did survive and their parents got to finally hold them separately.
Ben Carson reaches a point in his life when he realizes that he is too busy. He knows that family is the number one important thing to him and that's his first priority. He wants to be there for his children because his father wasn't there for him and his brother and he doesn't want that for his children.
When asked "What's the key to your success?" Ben Carson answers "think big". Think big is an analogy and it stands for Talent/Time, Hope/Honesty, Insight, Nice, Knowledge, Books, In-Depth Learning, and God.

• Quotation

"Whatever direction we choose, if we can realize that ever hurdle we jump strengthens and prepares us for the next, we're already on the way to success" (Carson 224).

• Reaction

This is the last sentence in his biography. The quote is the message that he sends to young people and is one of the many things he wants us to realize. I completely agree with this quote. Whatever we do in life we always reach to a problem that keeps us from getting to that point. It's when we take those challenges and learn from that enables to become successful in life. When we take these barriers and use them as excuses for not achieving our goals it brings us nowhere. But when we get pass them we'll be ready for the next one and things become somewhat easier in life.

Gifted Hands The Ben Carson Story (Chpts. 15-18)

Gifted Hands
By: Ben Carson with Cecil Murphy
Pages: 147-191

• Summary

Maranda ended up living through the surgery. She was the first of many other successful hemispherectomy with only one death. After this happened a TV show did a part on hemispherectomies and Ben Carson was asked to appear on the Phil Donahue Show. He didn't accept this because he didn't want to become a celebrity doctor and didn't want to start believing that he was really good.
The one death was a girl named Jennifer. She was only 5 months old and having lots of seizures. When he had completed with Jennifer's surgery he had gone home but was called back in for her. There was no explanation to what happened because he had done everything he could. This was the most emotional procedure for him.
A 13-year old girl named Denise Baca had a hemispherectomy by Ben Carson. Critics forbade anyone to do any surgical procedures on her because there were too many risks. Ben and some others didn't agree so they waited when the critics were gone to perform the surgery and it was a success. After that experience he learned that when a person knows what they're capable of doing something it doesn't matter who tries to stop them.
There were three cases that Ben Carson knows will remain unforgettable to him.
1. A 4-year-old girl named Bo-Bo Valentine. Her eyes had dilated so Ben Carson decided to do =a craniectomy immediately. One of the surgeons Carson admired had told him to not do the surgery because it would've been a waste of his time. After the surgery Bo-Bo was in a coma for a few days. Then she started to recover and is now fully recover.
2. Charles was a 10-year-old and had been hit by a car. When his eyes dilated he needed to have surgery but his mother didn't want him to be cut up in pieces. But when Carson explained to her that Charles would have a chance if he had surgery she agreed. After the surgery he stayed in a coma for a week with no change. This case was brought at a conference that Carson was not a part of and many thought that the surgery had been a very bad idea. Charles fully recovered before a full month after his surgery.
3. This was the case of Danielle. She was 5 months old. She had a grown a tumor the size of her head and it grew beyond the skin with pus coming out of it. The people that were a part of this team was a plastic surgeon, Dr. Dufresne, and Lewis Strauss who were supposed to come up with a chemotherapy program to kill the malignant (dangerous) cells. During the surgery Dr Dufresne came in when the skin needed to be closed over. The surgery was a success. Then she died.
A man named Craig had a condition called Von hippel-Lindau (VHL) which caused multiple brain tumors. He and his wife Susan had been through so much. Craig was expected to die in a few years from all the brain tumors. Carson decided to do a surgery on him to remove a brain tumor that was near his brain stem. He completed the surgery but Carson hypothesized that he would end up with one side of his body paralyzed and would die in a couple of months. This crushed Susan because she had been through a lot with Craig and after all of that he was going to die. However after the second part of the surgery after all hope was gone from Carson the next day he came to find Craig up and functioning normally. Craig had gotten the miracle he had asked for. His condition was no more!

• Quotation

"It made me think of how people take simple things for granted" (Carson 192).

• Reaction

This is when Carson's surgery on Craig was successful. Susan and Craig went back home and she called Carson to tell him that Craig had eaten a plate of speghetti and actually swallowed. With VHL it took him an hour and a half to eat a plate of food and he couldn't swallow. I thought that this was true because a lot of things happen to people and they take it for granted. People should take more time to appreciate the things they have in their lives.

Gifted Hands The Ben Carson Story (Chpts. 11-14)

Gifted Hands
By: Ben Carson with Cecil Murphy
Pages: 104-146

• Summary

During Carson's years in medical school at University of Michigan, he got to do a lot of hands on work. However he ended up transferring to Johns Hopkins because he feared the environment at U of M would change after the chairman retired. Carson was one of the two chosen students by Hopkins out 125 applicants.
The only pressure Carson ever felt during his internship was to be a role model for Black teens. He felt that many of them needed to know that the power to be successful is within them and not just handed to them.
While he was an intern at Hopkins he had a problem with one of the chief residents. His name was Tommy and he did not like having a Black intern at Johns Hopkins. Whenever Carson had a question Tommy would always snap at him and never fully answer them. However Carson just kept calm and never responded negatively.
One situation that was significant during his internship was saving someone's life. It was at the time of the AANS and most of the faculty went away at the meeting. There was this man who had been beaten and needed surgery or he would die. Carson didn't know what to do because he was just an intern and it was illegal for him to operate without supervision. He ended up performing the surgery and saving the man's life.
Carson got to have one of the best experiences an intern could get. He had been accepted for a one year job position in Australia. He had many conflicts that came up with this offer. Candy was pregnant and had been put to bed rest. Also he had thought there was a Whites-only policy in Australia but later found out that it had already been abolished. When he got to Australia he got to Australia he instantly fell in love with it. He got to perform a copious amount of surgeries in that one year. Also Candy had given birth to their son Murray Nedlands Carson.
When Carson got back to America and back to John Hopkins he had been given the position of the new chief of pediatric neurosurgery.
While he was chief he had to go through one of the toughest thing he had so far in his career. He was expected to perform a surgery he had never done before. There was a girl named Maranda and she had Rasmussen's encephalitis. This caused her to have periodic half gran mal seizures but only on the right side of her body. She would have 100 seizures in a day. Her mother stopped making her eat because she had a high risk of choking. Carson was expected to perform a hemispherectomy which had many risks. Maranda could end bleeding to death during the surgery but her parents insisted that it didn't make any difference because without the surgery Maranda would end up dying either way.

• Quotation

"No knowledge is ever wasted" (Carson 111).

• Reaction

Ben says this after his interview with a representative for John Hopkins. He had mentioned his attending in a concert the interviewer, Dr.Udvarhelyi, had also attended. That's when he realized that nothing that you learn in life is ever wasted. There is a reason and a purpose behind everything you learn. Carson's love for classical music allowed him to relate more to Candy since she is a violinist.

Gifted Hands The Ben Carson Story (Chpts. 6-10)

Gifted Hands
By: Ben Carson with Cecil Murphy
Pages: 54-103

• Summary

Ben starts to get into to some conflicts in his life. One conflict is man vs. himself. He starts to get this uncontrollable anger that he can't seem to control. When it gets out of hand he prays to God and asks for help so his temper could go away because it caused him to almost kill one of his good friends. He then starts to draw himself away from the "in-crowd" and starts to focus more on his grades. Ben also joins the ROTC in his school which shows how determined he becomes with his goals. Though he had started ROTC during the middle of the year he had received more medals than most of the others who were there longer than he had. Soon Ben has to start thinking about his college decisions. Each application had a ten dollar fee and he only had ten dollars so he had to pick one college.Ben had to choose between Yale and Hardvard. He chose Yale over Harvard because Yale had beat Harvard on a game show called College Bowl by 510 to 35 points.
College life was very different to Ben. He instantly realized that he wasn't so bright after all and his confidence immediately lowered. He was worried because he was failing chemistry and needed only a miracle to help him pass so he could be able to go to med school. So again he prayed to God and asked for help if He really wanted him to become a doctor. When Ben fell asleep the night before the final exam he had a dream. In his dream, he was in his classroom and there was someone writing on the board. The writing were all equations that he would need on the final. The next day when he received the exam he saw that all the equations he saw in his dream were exactly what he needed to complete the exam. He passed the final with a 97.
During his time in college he had a lot of summer jobs. He worked at a car dealership and then as a supervisor for highway clean-up crew. During his time at work he wanted to do the best work he could do and that's exactly what he did. He also received a job as a highway clean-up supervisor. With his highway clean-up crew his were the only ones who got 150 bags of garbage everyday and achieved this faster than the other crews. He learned a lot from his working experiences and especially confirmed something his mother had always told was true.
At Yale Ben meets Candy whom he falls in love with. She was a sophomore in college while he was a senior. One night while driving with Candy, Ben fell into a quick sleep and almost died. Instead of the car flipping it just kept spinning in the middle of the road.
The reason why Ben Carson is referred to as gifted hands is because he has great hand and eye coordination which is a key characteristic a surgeon must have. Thus leading to the title of this autobiography; Gifted Hands.

• Quotation

"I knew from my own experience how right she was: The kind of job doesn't matter. The length of time on the job doesn't matter, for it's true even with a summer job. If you work hard and do your best, you'll be recognized and moved onward" (Carson 88).

• Reaction

This quote explains something he learned during his time with summer jobs. This saying is something his mother had always told him but he realized on his own that day how true it is. It's saying that when you work hard at something people will see past your appearance and recognize you as who are and in that way you will achieve. I think this is true because when you enter a place you're constantly judged. By working hard towards you're goals you can be seen past your gender or the color of your skin and be seen as the person you really are. Then with that you'll be on your way to success.

Gifted Hands The Ben Carson Story (Chpts. 1-5)

Gifted Hands
By: Ben Carson with Cecil Murphey
Pages: 11-53

• Summary

This story starts out with Ben Carson and his family. Ben's mother leaves her husband because he had another wife and children that she didn't know about. After a while Sonya, Ben's mother, starts to leave home because of her psychological problems due to depression and not having not having any support through her divorce. Throughout everything Ben's mother always kept telling Ben and his brother Curtis how hard they had to work to be what they wanted to be. Their mother made them work really hard; allowing them only three television programs a week and requiring them to read two books a week with a report. Even when her neighbors chastised her about how she was raising her children she didn't care because she knew it would benefit them. To Ben and Curtis it did seemed unreasonable at first but then they realized how much they were learning from these books.
Ben also explains many racial conflicts he had gone through during his childhood. One example was when he won the highest academic achievement certificate. When he received this award, one of his teachers announced to the whole school during the award assembly and said "You're not trying hard enough"(Carson 42). She was trying to say that the rest of the school population should try harder and not let Ben, one of the few Black students in the school, receive this certificate.
When Ben reaches high school he gets crowded into peer pressure. The people at his school always wore the nicest clothes and so he began to beg his mother to buy him these nice clothes, insensitive to the fact that she couldn't afford those types of clothing. He started to cap, ("make the most sarcastic remark possible, and add humor to it" (Carson 42)), students so he could be a part of the "in-crowd" because that's what they did as well. As a result his grades dropped.

• Quotation

"Almost daily she'd say, "Bennie, you can do anything you set yourself to do" (Carson 37).

• Reaction

When I read this part it reminded me of my mother. My mother is always telling me that if i want something then I have to work hard to get it. A lot of things that Ben's mother, Sonya, does makes me think of my mother.