Dr. Alfredo Quiñones Hinojosa

And every time I am about to walk into the operating room, I get nervous.

It's that fine line between life and death that gives you the pause, the preoccupation, the adrenaline to make sure that all your senses are hyper, not just acute, but are hyper acute.

So time passes.

slows down.

Your ability to see, hear, multitask, it gets super enhanced.

And it's that adrenaline, in my opinion, that allows you to do things that are sometimes considered to be very challenging.

For instance, the moment that something goes wrong, which has happened to me after you've done 5,000 surgeries,

You know, there's been moments where suddenly something changes quite rapidly.

A blood vessel explodes.

The vitals change.

A patient has a heart attack.

The heart stops.

You name it.

Anything.

And at those moments, your adrenaline goes through the roof.

Your heart goes to 180 beats per minute.

And yet, you have to remain calm.

I tell you, this is the operating room for me.

is like an orchestra, is like a symphony.

Because if you listen to the sounds of about 20 to 25 people moving around the operating room quietly, the anesthesiologist, the machine beeping, the machine breathing for the patient sometimes,