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An Accidental Journey
By Dr. Fred Epstein

Dr. Fred Epstein is a leading pediatric neurosurgeon and the founding director of the Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. If I Get to Five: What Children Have Taught Me About Courage and Character, written with Joshua Horwitz, is his first book.

I'm a pediatric neurosurgeon who's been working closely with children in medical crises for more than 34 years. Two years ago, I decided to write a book about my exceptional young patients, a personal and professional summing up of what I'd learned from these kids while fighting alongside them for their lives.

It didn't turn out the way I'd planned.

One month after signing a publishing contract, I had a near-fatal bicycle accident. I landed on my head and, even though I was wearing a helmet, the concussion caused a bleed in my brain that sent me into a coma. I remained unconscious for almost a month, and when, against all expectation, I regained consciousness, I was completely helpless. Day by day over the ensuing months, I gradually had to reclaim my basic life functions -- relearning how to breathe, how to talk, how to eat, and how to walk.

It was quite a fall, from heading up a premier pediatric neurosurgical team to being just another head-trauma patient in rehab. Worst of all, I knew exactly how slow and arduous my road back to function would be. On some level, I understood I'd lost something I'd never regain -- the feeling of omnipotence that every surgeon has to summon on a daily basis before he can open up someone's skull and probe inside with sharp instruments.

What I hadn't lost, and what I realized could never be taken from me, was my will to recover and return to work. I knew just where to turn for encouragement and guidance. I hadn't communicated with many of my young patients for over a decade. But I knew that if I wrote to them, asking what had gotten them through the toughest times they'd face, they'd come through for me. And they did.

People who don't know any better have a tendency to think of children in diminutive terms -- as little people, as underdeveloped souls-in-training. To me they're giants. They humble me with their bravery, with their tenacity, and with their boundless capacity for compassion. Over the years, I've watched them up close as they've stared down death and reached out to life with both hands. Every day when I went to work, I felt their strength as they forcibly and effortlessly unclenched their hearts and mine.

If I Get to Five is really their book. It's their testament to the wellsprings of courage and resilience that they drew on to see them through their medical and spiritual crisis. Their journeys of hope and faith became my journey; their lessons in love without boundaries became my core curriculum as I struggled to regain a foothold in a life that had been pulled out from under me.

I wish I had gotten to write the book I set out to write. I wish I still had everything that got swept away 18 months ago. I wish I were still riding 20 miles every morning on my bicycle, still suiting up for surgery 5 days a week.

Instead, I've embarked on an accidental journey toward an uncertain destination. We all wonder what we're made of. Like my young patients, I've had the chance to find out. I've been tested in ways I never was before -- not as a medical student, not as a neurosurgeon, not as a husband or as a parent. I've been challenged to find a way to move forward into the future, stripped of almost everything I felt I needed to be useful and powerful in the world.

Most of all, I've been challenged -- and inspired -- by the example of my young patients. They've raised the bar for me, showed me how to clear that bar...and then set it again a notch higher. It's the only way to get back home.

A few of my favorite books:

• The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
• Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews - A History by James Carroll
• Screwball by David Ferrell

And two audiobooks I particularly enjoyed:

• John Adams by David McCullough
• Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism by Thomas L. Friedman

Find If I Get to Five on BookSense.com!

Further Reading:

• Michael Perry
• Sir John Sulston
• Ted Chiang

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Browse Archived Excerpts

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