INSIDE THE BRAIN OF A CHILD
AT 8 o’clock on an icy morning, Jay Jayamohan is doing ward rounds at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Someone has made a valiant attempt to cheer up the place. The walls are orange, the window frames are pink and paper stars hang from the ceiling.
A child-sized wheelchair sits next to the reception desk, which is covered in cards. “Thank u for helping me get better,” reads one, in sprawling child’s handwriting.
Jay (49) is a children’s brain surgeon. Today, his patients include a three-month-old baby with a bleed on the brain and a cheerful four-year-old boy who needs a third operation on his brain stem. He coaxes a smile out of a grumpy little boy with an enormous bandage around his head and explains to the tense parents of another how he will perform a shunt operation later that day.
“You could go on Google if you have any questions when you get home,” he tells the mother of a baby who’s due to be discharged, “but remember that anyone can come back from the pub and write stuff on Google. We’re here 24/7 if you need us.”
For the parents, a paediatric neurosurgery ward is a truly frightening place. For Jay, leaning against the doorframe and radiating relaxation, it’s the office. Today, it’s an office whose IT system has been down for 24 hours, so the seven-strong team of medics trooping along in his wake have only paper records about what’s been happening. If he’s frustrated, he doesn’t show it. He became a neurosurgeon, he says, because he thinks it’s the highest achievement in medicine.
