THE TENTH NERVE

The Tenth Nerve takes you inside a neurosurgeon's life in an engaging, sympathetic, and frequently dramatic way. Honey is a natural story-teller – and not just about his surgeries, which make for riveting, edge-of-the-seat reading. There's intriguing information about the brain here – including a fascinating condensed history of neurosurgery – but the book always comes back to people and their stories.

The first story takes place in Africa. Honey was persuaded to operate on Saika, a remarkable nine month old boy in Liberia with an “inoperable brain condition. Saika died soon afterwards, but the result of the operation brought great benefits to his family and his village. This taught Honey that while he could fail as a physician, he must always try to help. Jeff, the patient who crystalized Honey's decision to study surgery, had fallen from a construction site in Toronto. He nearly died twice in ER but was dramatically saved. The other five stories all carry lessons. Emily and Leo, for example, had an extremely serious, but hitherto unknown, coughing/choking condition, later named HeLPS. But they refused to give up in the face of specialists' inability to resolve the issue until the c ondition was finally identified and cured by Honey and his team.

The Tenth Nerve pays tribute to seven brave patients who allowed Honey to glimpse some fundamental truths
in medicine and humanity, and in so doing made him a better person. The scalpel ca n only go so deep, he says. The Tenth Nerve , I hope, is a book is about curiosity, courage, and caring.”

DR. CHRISTOPHER HONEY is a pioneering Canadian neurosurgeon based at Vancouver General Hospital. In addition to his research on understanding and treating movement disorders and human pain pathways, he has given over 200 lectures on six continents. He has provided pro bono, humanitarian surgical care in Liberia and Ghana and been invited to operate in China, Indonesia and Kuwait. As President of the World Neurosurgical Federation for Cranial Nerve Disorders, he will host the 3rd World Congress of this Society in Vancouver in 2022.