Thank you.

Twenty years ago, before I was a nurse--before I had even started nursing school--I was at a used bookstore. I saw a title that intrigued me: "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat."It was my introduction to Oliver Sacks. It was the beginning of a relationship, however one-sided, that got me into nursing, got me into neuroscience, and has kept me there for more than a decade.Oliver Sacks was a walking contradiction: he was on the Asperger's spectrum, as he diagnosed himself, yet he was able to interact with his patients in such a way as to humanize even the most disabled person. He was obsessive, by his own admission; yet, he translated his obsessions into ordinary-person-friendly tales of his life as a doctor and the lives of his patients. He was incredibly learned, but never resorted to jargon when simple English would do. He was shy, but he put himself out to the public in a series of books about his practice and his life that showed us as much about ourselves as it did him.The one true regret I have--after divorce, after cancer, after lost friends and relatives--is that I never got to sit down and listen to him talk. Just ramble, or expound on one of his favorite subjects, whether it was music or the periodic table or his days as a weightlifter on Muscle Beach. It wouldn't have mattered; I felt that close to him through reading his work.It's important to remember that Dr. Sacks made most of his diagnoses and discoveries in the days before functional MRI or good CT scanni...
Source: Head Nurse - Category: Nursing Authors: Source Type: blogs