Grandad's old books

In the basement were years and years of accumulated horrific Kodachrome slides documenting murders and autopsies. At age three I found a brain in a glass jar in a cabinet. Photos and medical journals were arranged along with boxes of medical implements and pharmaceutical samples. Large forceps, clamps and scalpels lay next to syringes and glinting stainless steel cairns. Underlying it all was a vague aroma of formaldehyde and isoprpyl alcohol.

I was nurtured in a loving house but surrounded by mystery and a forboding sense of death.

Never in my wildest imagination would I have ever chosen to pursue a carrer in medicine.