Operating Room Quotes

Football has never left me. I still wake up in the morning and think of the operating room like a game, like it's showtime, let's perform.

I was asked by an NPR reporter once why don't I talk about race that often. I said, 'It's because I'm a neurosurgeon.' And she thought that was a strange response... I said, 'You see, when I take someone to the operating room, I'm actually operating on the thing that makes them who they are. The skin doesn't make them who they are.'

Operating-room errors hold a special terror for patients, if only because they seem like the most avoidable kind of complications. The occasional horror stories of patients who have the wrong leg removed or the wrong knee replaced generate the most headlines, as do tales of patients whose identities are mixed up entirely.

I was going to go to school to become a neurological surgeon.

I have a great surgeon that put me together.

I'd make a terrible surgeon. The fear of blood? Very high on my list.

Football has done so much for me, given me friends, family, given me life lessons that now I can use in the operating room or just as a leader.

I learned a long time ago that minor surgery is when they do operation on someone else, not you.

I use music in the operating room to help create a healing environment for patients and staff. There is a reason that certain heart rates are healthy and certain beats of music heal and relax us.

The scrub sink...is the place where doctors wash their hands after they operate so that they won't get flecks of your vital organs on their Lexus upholstery.

I temporarily became a surgeon for 'Memory of Love'. I spent two weeks in an operating theatre, watching amputations, and I loved it.

A preacher was operated on for a hernia. As this was about the time of the first world war he was given ether. As he was coming out of the anesthetic a fire broke out in the building next door. As the flames began to show through the hospital windows the nurse pulled the shades down. She didn't want the preacher to think his operation had been a failure.

I did get to shadow some amazing brain surgeons, a female brain surgeon in Toronto, another surgeon in London. And then we had a surgeon onset [of Doctor Strange] every day. So and he taught me to do sutures and was practicing on turkey breasts, raw turkey breasts.

That fascinated me. I used to watch all these operations on TV and thought it would be really cool to do that.

Neurosurgery is a new challenge with each case. The preparation, the discipline, the technical skills and the need to perform at your very best under pressure provide the same adrenaline rush I had in football.

As a surgeon you have to have a controlled arrogance. If it's uncontrolled, you kill people, but you have to be pretty arrogant to saw through a person's chest, take out their heart and believe you can fix it. Then, when you succeed and the patient survives, you pray, because it's only by the grace of God that you get there.

When you're doing those operation scenes, you not only have to be on top of the dialogue and the rhythm of the dialogue and what's happening dramatically, but you've got to technically get the rhythm right, so that everything is fitting with the dialogue at the right time. And you're performing the operation to the audience that's watching it. Thackery has to present it, as well. In some ways, that's the most challenging.

When you hear 'From the Other Side,' it's like being on an operating table. Suddenly, you're on the ceiling looking down at the doctors who are fighting for you. Are you gonna get a second chance or not?

When I was little, I wanted to be a plastic surgeon.

[T]hey stretch you on a table. Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the anæsthetic reaches Hot and subtle through your being.

In 'Bodies,' we had a lot of gore because it was a medical drama. The gore was authentic.

I chose surgery because I thought that perhaps this would make me more like the kind of person I wanted to be.

My own son has a congenital heart condition, where his life was saved by a cardiac surgeon stepping in at 11 days of life to save his life. But he is now 21 years old because of constant monitoring and working with him with a primary care physician. that's the only reason now that he's getting to live a long and healthy life. That's what we're not rewarding. They don't have the kind of resources and commitment that we are giving to people like me. I have millions of dollars of equipment available to me when I go to work every day in an operating room.

iron surgeon

In my own personal life, God plays a great role in the risk, because I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do - and not only for operating, but for everything.