At the age of twelve, I began writing down my mother’s operating room stories in a journal. “Tonight at dinner, Mom told us about a surgeon she worked with today. She said everyone calls him the Head Chopper. He does the most serious cancer cases from the neck up, and he always requests Mom to help him because, so far, she hasn’t made any mistakes. Mom says he’s kicked more nurses out of the operating room for not having their hair up, or touching the sterile cloth or handing him the wrong instrument. Today he yelled at a nurse standing next to Mom, ‘Get out you moron,’ and flung the scalpel across the patient at her and Mom ducked out of harms way. That’s all for now. Time for bed.”