Henry Marsh, author of Do no Harm – Photo by Chris Boland 

A neurosurgeon performing surgery

I am deep in my thoughts

Like a neurosurgeon performing a surgery on a patient

Who was diagnosed with aneurysm

A morbid dilatation of the wall of a blood vessel, usually an artery

No matter how painful the pain is

I am bound to perform the incision

As I imagine illness happening on myself

That can cause catastrophic hemorrhage in the brain

As I perform the operation

To place a minute spring loaded metal clip across the neck of the aneurysm

I try to prevent the aneurysm just a few minutes across

A danger I face as a surgeon

Is inadvertently bursting the aneurysm while dissecting it

From the surrounding brain and blood vessels

Working at several inches depth in the center of the patient’s head

In a narrow space beneath the brain

I operated and caught the aneurysm

Trapping it and obliterating it with a glittering spring-loaded titanium clip

Saving the patient’s life

Source: (Do no harm: Stories of life, death and brain surgery by Henry Marsh)