Charles L. Rosen, MD, PhD – Neurosurgeon in Morgantown, WV

This was a gift to me by a close friend when I finished my med school, when they knew I was going on to become a neurosurgeon. This is something I spent many, many hours studying. I take all these pieces apart, constantly trying to memorize all the little bumps and grooves and relationships so that when I operate on somebody, I don't go the wrong way or in the wrong place. This whole skull comes apart so you can see all the different pieces and you can see into different parts of the skull, and to do this dissection work is technically very demanding. A very important teaching tool. I have always tried to be respectful of it and where it potentially came from.

The most important thing to know about me as a neurosurgeon, for a patient, is that I'm going to be the most ardent advocate and supporter of that patient, because you're going to develop a relationship where you're not just responsible for doing the surgery. You're responsible for educating the patient, responsible for taking the patient through the whole process of understanding what's going on, what to expect. Also, working with the family and getting them on the same page. And then, obviously following surgery, working with everybody to ensure the patient has the best outcome. You have to be there for them when things go well, and more importantly, you have to be there for them when things don't go well.

The most satisfying thing to me as a neurosurgeon is my ability to have impact on people's lives. Neurosurgery is a very, very challenging field, not only because the procedures we do are difficult, but because the risks to our patients are very high. And so when you're confronted with somebody who has such a serious problem, and you're able to help them with that problem, there's no feeling like it in the world. The satisfaction, the joy you get, is just unlike anything that I can imagine any other job could ever give somebody and that's why it's really not even a job. It's just a lifelong passion.

A patient who came to me one time that I really felt thrilled with my opportunity was somebody who came to me with almost all her vision gone. She had an unusual, not that unusual, but a giant pituitary tumor. One as large as hers is unusual. Pituitary tumors, in general, are not rare, but one as large as hers is rare. When she came to me, she couldn't see out of one of her eyes, and the vision out of her other eye was so blurry that she could count fingers if I held them in front of her, but she couldn't read a card even with giant letters on it. I took her to the O.R. to remove this tumor, and that's sort of a tricky thing you do. You actually go up through the nose to take out these tumors, and as I work, I'm decompressing the tumor and pulling it away from the optic nerves, and also away from the big arteries that feed the brain: the carotid arteries. And when I was done, I was able to remove this whole tumor, and she woke up with what we thought was going to be okay vision.

What was funny about her is I came into her room to check on her just immediately after surgery and I said, "How's your vision?" She goes, "I think it's a little better." And I said, "A little better?" She goes, "Yeah, I think it's a little better." Well, before surgery, she was called finger counting. I mean, even the biggest numbers she couldn't read. So that would be more than 2200. She was only down to 2030, and that was a little bit better. And then she sent me a letter later on, which I have on my desk to this day. And the letter talked about the beauty of being able to see her children and her grandchildren, and watching them grow, which she couldn't do before.

I've always been interested in the brain and the human body. I mean, it's really just a fascinating aspect of us. You know, the most sophisticated computer known to man is the human brain. And my wife and I, we enjoy travel around the world, and I've been able to collect these prints over the years for not very much money. These aren't valuable pieces of art. They're just things that are valuable to me. For instance, this first picture here is dated somewhere in the late 1500s to early 1600s. And what I love about this picture is it's all wrong. This was an early attempt at teaching anatomy, and unfortunately, teaching it incorrectly. These two other pictures are technically far more modern from the 17 and 1800s. And I like these pictures just because of the artistry of capturing these three-dimensional structures and the beauty of the base of the brain, because the base of the brain, the skull base where I like to operate is very complex anatomy. And so these pictures show real artistic skill in their ability to recreate this very complex and challenging anatomy.