Admissions is the memoir of Henry Thomas Marsh CBE FRCS, a retired British neurosurgeon (I understand surgeons in Great Britain are usually addressed as Mister instead of Doctor.) Mr. Marsh shares his thoughts and feelings as he reminisces over his distinguished 40-year career of performing intricate lifesaving brain surgeries. (There is even a documentary about him.)
Don’t let the subtitle, Life as a Brain Surgeon, deter you from reading it though. Although he narrates details of surgeries he has performed, he refrains from “gory” descriptions (although as a physician I may not be the best judge). He explains enough of the anatomy and technique to be interesting and informative, but not so complicated to bore the lay reader.
The true gems in his narrative are not the anatomical details of the patients’ conditions but how those conditions affect their lives. In his “Life as a Brain Surgeon”, Mr. Marsh routinely treated life-threatening conditions, like brain hemorrhages, as well as potentially disabling ones, like tumors that destroy the optic nerve, causing permanent blindness. All too frequently he faced the dilemma of being uncertain if the patient is better off with or without surgery. In either case, his decision will have permanent lifechanging implications for a family, a task he takes to heart.
Besides his long neurosurgical career in England, he has regularly travelled to Nepal and Ukraine to teach surgeons and assist in surgeries, both simple and complicated. These national surgeons are grateful to receive this advanced education not available in their own countries. Mr. Marsh hints that he derives his greatest career satisfaction from working with the professionals and the patients in these countries and ending that association is perhaps harder than leaving practice in his own country.

Anticipating his retirement, Mr. Marsh finds and buys a run-down lakeside cottage where he hopes to “cope with retirement”, pursuing his hobby of woodworking. But before he can do that, he needs to spend considerable time and energy renovating it, a task proving more involved than he anticipated.
His narrative moves back and forth from his hospital in London, his cottage in Oxford, and trips to Nepal and Ukraine as he wraps up his work there and says goodbye to the surgeons who are now friends as well as colleagues.
Mr. Marsh’s reminisces extend beyond his career to include his childhood and parents, his schooling, two marriages, and his children. And after a lengthy career of helping others cheat death, he ponders how his own will happen.

I think Mr. Marsh wrote his memoir more for himself than for others, but I am glad he did not keep it to himself. Reading his candid reflection on a life far different from ours is entertaining yet deeply thought provoking and somber. Perhaps reading his book will spur us to look similarly at our “life as a…..” and be pleased with what we see.

I enjoyed this interesting and well-written book as a neurosurgeon looks at his career as he prepares to retire. Great read!

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I had mixed feelings about this title. It's interesting, but my sense of connection with the author came and went. At imes, I found it engaging; at other times it just felt cranky.

Thomas Dunne Books and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Admissions. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

Dr. Henry Marsh takes the reader through a time in his life that most people dread: the end of his professional career and into retirement. After 40 years as a doctor of medicine and neurosurgery, Dr. Marsh is embarking on a future filled with peace and solitude, punctuated by a pursuit of long forgotten hobbies. At the same time, the doctor travels to the impoverished countries of Nepal and the Ukraine, providing well needed medical services.

Having read Do No Harm, Admissions feel a bit repetitive to me. Many of the medical cases feel similar, if not the same, so I did not feel as fully vested in this book as I did the previous one.

I did find it interesting to hear a doctor's perspective on the changes in medicine, particularly when it comes to hospital administrative purposes and the inclusion of the computerized age. His travels to other countries, to provide assistance to those who would not have access to his type of specialized medicine, is commendable. Admissions seemed a little disjointed to me, with the stories not organized in a cohesive fashion. I would have to recommend Do No Harm before I would suggest readers pick up this publication.

Marsh has spent his career as a neurosurgeon in England. After retirement, he worked pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. This was a fascinating and well written book. Marsh has a unique voice, one that made it hard to put his book down. I loved his insights into life and his point of view. Overall, highly recommended.

I loved this - it is an interested reflection on his life as a neurosurgeon. Working in chapters and thoughts in his retirement, death, volunteer work (Nepal and the Ukraine) were absolutely fascinating. I haven't read his first book, but it's certainly on my to-read list now.

Dr. Henry Marsh wrote about his career as a brain surgeon in Do No Harm, published in 2014. In this second book, he writes about the things he has done since retiring, around that same time: he went back to Nepal and Ukraine to again assist neurosurgeons he’s trained and helped over the years; he bought a small lockkeeper’s cottage along a canal near where he grew up and got to work cleaning it up and setting it to rights after long years of neglect; he continued to do woodwork.

The book is a bit meandering, taking readers back and forth between the cottage, where he’s tossing out years of debris and clearing the yard for new gardens, including some apple and walnut trees; the hospital where he’s worked for some time and is retiring from, and the homes and hospitals where his longtime friends in Nepal and Ukraine work tirelessly to provide care to people who live in much different circumstances than do we in the West.

Marsh shares many of his concerns about the state of health care in the United Kingdom, which has a system he feels could work very well for its citizens but falls short because of complicated bureaucracy and politicians who aren’t willing to raise sufficient funds to make it work as it should. He reflects on patients he’s seen who have suffered needlessly at the end of their lives because of too much medical intervention and the lack of the option to choose when to die. He reflects on his own aging and mortality and how he would like to be able to die; he stresses several times that he’s not religious and firmly does not believe in an afterlife, so he simply would like to have a good death. He reflects often about the mistakes he’s made and some regrets he does have. As he retires from his career but spends time with those he’s mentored in Nepal and Ukraine, he questions how much he’s been able to help and how well those men he’s trained can carry on neurosurgery in their countries.

I still have Do No Harm on my to-read list, but I had the opportunity to read this book first, thanks to getting an ARC from NetGalley. I think now I’ll push that one up closer to the top of my read-next list and see what else Marsh has to say about his work over the years. I enjoyed this book, though it did wander a bit, so I imagine the other will be just as interesting or more so, with it probably focused more on the brain surgery he did for so many years. Marsh has some interesting insights on life, death/dying and medical practice, and his take on the British National Health Service is valuable as those of us who live in the U.S. still debate how best to provide health care to our citizens.

Rated: Moderate. There is one instance of strong language very near the beginning and one of moderate language near the end. Sexual references are limited to an admission of an extramarital affair and a mention of a passionate kiss but no details. While this book does discuss some surgeries, mostly of the brain, it doesn’t have a lot in the way of blood. Honestly, if this book didn’t have those two words, it would nearly be a “none” rating.

one is quite a bit different. I loved Marsh's honesty and the beautiful way he wrote about the brain in Do No Harm, but in Admissions there are fewer patients and less poetry in his prose. It is a perfectly titled book as Marsh admits his anxiousness to retire, worries about whether the drugs in his suicide kit will be outdated, overwhelming desires to renovate a derelict cottage, the sad state of healthcare in Nepal and the Ukraine, and many of his own doubts and regrets. This is all written in a choppy and difficult-to-read style that jumps from his admittance to a psychiatric hospital to tweaking the nose of a male nurse in fury to the daffodils he planted when an affair ended. Marsh's honesty and questioning is writ large in Admissions, but it often comes across as sad and weary despair.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the book.

Admissions is the memoir of Henry Marsh, an English neurosurgeon, in the period before and immediately after his retirement.

I really wanted to read this book because the subject is so interesting to me. Sadly, I was disappointed. The book is a deadly long stream of consciousness ramble from which it is hard, almost impossible, to discern a theme or themes, or get a glimpse into the author's personality. He writes with the distraction and emotional distance of a surgeon dictating a post-operative note. I got the sense that Mr Marsh had a story to tell and a few axes to grind, and had there been any attempt to connect, or, in some cases, disconnect, his thoughts there might have been a readable book hidden amidst the meandering.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

Very good personal memoir from a person who has seen so much!

I cannot get enough of these real life medical dramas. I'll be adding this one to the list.