Jenny Graves

gene mapping.

I moved to Canberra to ANU and so the book got shelved again.

So I rewrote it again for the fourth time, but this time for a more general audience.

What was your recovery like and did that experience change the way you did science?

It changed the way I thought about life as it normally would.

It surprised me how quickly I came to accept the fact that I might die any minute.

I thought it would be really traumatic, but I thought, oh, well, this could be it.

And the decisions I had to make, the neurosurgery was very dangerous.

And I was warned that I had 25% chance of death or destruction.

I wasn't so scared of death, but the destruction of my brain would have been horrible.

And I just felt extremely grateful.

I'm very, very determined about getting better.

I really worked the physiotherapy all day, every day.

I was so determined to get

my life back.

One of my students came to visit me in hospital and said, well, now you'll be able to figure out what you really want to do.

And I thought, yes, what I really want to do is get back to work, get back to my lab, get back to my students, get back to these fascinating things that I'm doing.

That's what I really want to do.