This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta.

All of us have days when despite our best efforts, everything just goes wrong.

Sometimes terribly wrong.

It was devastating problem.

Atul Gawande is a surgeon at Brighamon Women's Hospital in Boston.

He's also a writer.

You might have read his work in the New Yorker or in Slate.

A few years ago, Atul was at work, operating on a patient he refers to as Mr. Haguemen.

I was taking out a tumor of the adrenal gland laparoscopically.

He'd performed this procedure dozens of times before, but this time was particularly tricky.

Mr. Haguemen's tumor was behind his liver, nestled tightly against an important blood vessel.

The main blood vessel returning the blood of the body to the heart.

It's known as the Vena Keva.

Atul began the surgery and everything was going smoothly.

He was almost done detaching the tumor.

When all of a sudden, he nicked the blood vessel.

I ended up creating a hole in the Vena Keva, which meant that he then pretty quickly lost

his entire blood volume into his abdomen, complete blackout on the screen and utter chaos.

Atul took the man's heart in his hand and began compressing it to keep blood flowing

to his brain.

I mean, he lost basically 10 times his body volume in blood, but we were able to give

him enough blood to keep his circulation going.

...