(Video Transcript)
Anything when you can make somebody feel better, help them along, there鈥檚 no better feeling in the world than that.
I'm a neurosurgeon. I鈥檓 interested in patients with brain tumors and mostly the surgical management of patients with brain tumors. I spend part of my time doing research, I spend part of my time seeing patients in clinic and deciding whether they need surgery, or seeing them after they鈥檝e had surgery in follow-up. Then I spend a couple of days a week in the operating room performing surgical procedures on patients with brain tumors.
How has neurosurgery changed since your training days?
Now, we don鈥檛 do any cases without using surgical navigation. We have a system where we can do an MRI before the operation, put it into the computer, and then it鈥檚 like a GPS system to help us navigate around the brain. We also have our intraoperative MR, which is my favorite thing, where we can do an MRI during the operation and we can check our work and make sure we鈥檝e taken out enough of whatever we鈥檙e trying to do.
What led you to become a neurosurgeon?
My grandmother had had a stroke, and I met a neurosurgeon and I thought it was pretty cool. I earned an eagle scout and they said "you can go to dinner with any profession you want," so I said "How 鈥榖out a brain surgeon?" So I went with a brain surgeon. He was a great guy, still a friend to this day. He was a really cool guy, I really looked up to him, I thought that was a neat profession, I went to the hospital with him, and all those things just sort of solidified that in my mind.
You鈥檝e got the day off鈥攚hat do you do?
I like to do things with my family. We like to go to southern Utah and do rappelling trips and canyoneering. We like to go to the Shakespearean festival, and just a lot of camping and hiking and things with the family. My wife and I do triathlons, although she鈥檚 a lot faster than I am, I鈥檓 pretty slow.
What I really like to do is build hot rods and I like to weld and build fun cars. You can make mistakes and you don鈥檛 hurt anybody and it gives you a chance to think and kind of work things out and be creative.
What would you be if you weren鈥檛 a neurosurgeon?
I really love neurosurgery so it鈥檚 hard to picture. But maybe I鈥檇 want to have a race team and build really fast cars and go around the country racing. There鈥檚 a 1980s movie, , and the guy is a neurosurgeon and a particle physicist and a rock star. I guess I鈥檇 want to be his job, maybe that鈥檚 what I would want to be.
Learn more about brain tumors and neurosurgery.
Learn more about Randy Jensen, MD, PhD.