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.