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A typical day

In before six to see the patients you operated on yesterday, most of them in the intensive care unit with chest tubes and monitors. First case starts at seven thirty: perhaps removing a lung lobe for cancer, three or four hours through small incisions with a camera. A break, then a second case. Afternoon is clinic, where you meet the people you will operate on next month and explain honestly what the operation can and cannot do. Evening rounds, notes, and then the phone, because chest injuries and bleeding do not keep office hours.