From the prologue: This is his last day at work; no patients are scheduled tooperate or consult. He just walks around, bidding farewell to anyone whorecognizes him. His office has already been emptied. Desk clear, walls bare-- diplomas, paintings, photographs of his father and family, treatmentalgorithms -- all gone. The last thing he must do is to return his ID tag -- hewill not be able to access the clinic and hospital anymore. The clinic laptopmust go as well. As of now, he does not belong here any longer. Essentially,his surgical career is over.

If asked which key words would define who he is, he wouldsay -- a general surgeon. Yes, this is how he describes his persona. For helived, ate, breathed, dreamed, and slept surgery for 45 years. Thinking aboutit, his hands explored the inside of living human bodies over the years, fromthe scalp to the toes. He removed fractured pieces of the cranium, cleanedclogged carotid arteries, resected lumpy thyroids and parathyroids, and choppedout cancerous esophagi and breasts. He fixed holes in the heart, sutured tornlungs, and ruptured diaphragms. He had walked within abdomens, chopping off, orfixing up, livers, pancreases, stomachs, colons, intestines, and gallbladders --everything. He replaced leaking aortic aneurysms and bypassed occluded arteriesin the limbs.

He incised gravid uteri to deliver newborn babies. He never shiedaway from the so-called 'minor' procedures, such as hernias, lumps, bumps, skincancers, varicose veins, etc. He must have saved many lives. He never countedhow many. He only remembers the few lives he has lost or directly contributedto their demise. He inflicted lots of pain to heal and alleviate suffering. Heconstantly read, pondered, discussed, and dreamed -- about surgery. Now it isall over.

He will never walk again into the emergency room late atnight, approach the suffering patient and his family -- all anxiously awaitinghim -- and introduce himself, "I am the general surgeon." He will not examinethe abdomen, look at the CT images and declare, "We have to operate on younow!" He never questioned why many thousands of people permitted him to plungea knife into their inner parts. Why did they trust him? For him, it wasobvious: he knows what he is doing. He is a general surgeon. It is over now. He is a surgeon no more. He is 75 years old and generally ingood shape. So what now? A memoir? I am that surgeon, and this book is my recollection ofsurgical life.