Career Really Is Brain Surgery for Class of 2016 Alumnus

“I really liked languages, and Ms. (Yasmin) Haque was great with me,” recalled Carl. “All the Spanish teachers were wonderful, and I ended up taking some German, a year of Arabic through the Global Online Academy, and a year of Russian at Yale, too.”

Carl went on to Williams College with the goal of helping people by becoming a Spanish interpreter.

“I took language classes at Williams my first couple years and even studied abroad in Madrid,” said Carl. “But I remember deciding that I wanted my life's work to help people in a very boots-on-the-ground, direct way. When I was reconsidering my career, I realized the way I wanted to make a difference, really solving people’s actual problems, was through medicine. I simultaneously took some psychology classes, and really liked neuroscience — and so I thought medicine might be for me.”

The first step that Carl took for his medical career was to shadow a spinal surgeon at Yale New Haven Hospital.

“I thought I was either going to love it or I’d throw up and faint,” recalled Carl. “But it turned out well, and I walked out of that first surgery saying, ‘I think I'm going to be a neurosurgeon.’ So, that was about halfway through college, and I directed my focus on neurosurgery.”

Carl is on his 13-year journey to become a neurosurgeon.

“After Williams, I completed my post-baccalaureate premedical program at the Johns Hopkins University and a research year at Brigham and Women’s Hospital,” said Carl. “I will complete my Doctor of Medicine degree at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University this May. Then, I will begin my neurosurgery residency at Brown.”

In Carl’s chosen career, he will be performing more than brain surgery.

“As a neurosurgeon, I will be removing tumors and clipping aneurysms in the brain,” explained Carl. “But I will also be performing spinal fusions and peripheral nerve surgeries, like removing a nerve tumor on an arm or leg, as well as functional neurosurgery, like deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease.”

While surgery is technically difficult, the hardest part of Carl’s training can be the emotional, patient-care side.

“I did a month rotation at Vanderbilt University Medical Center this past summer,” said Carl. “I remember a 70-year-old woman came at three in the morning after hitting her head in the bathtub. She was dead on arrival, and I had to tell her husband that she was not coming back, and he goes, ‘but it’s our 50th wedding anniversary this Saturday.’ It breaks your heart. These are often the hardest days of people's lives, and I think being able to get them through that, and actually fix them, is an incredible honor and also an enormous responsibility.”

Carl said he sees technology, research, and AI playing important roles in the future of neurosurgery.

“The general goal is to make things as minimally invasive as possible, while still keeping it safe and effective,” explained Carl. “We have tools like robotic spine surgery where you input 3D scans from CTs and MRIs into the robot to move the arm and your instruments exactly where you need to be. It's very precise. We’re also using brain mapping for tumors to work in 3D space to get to the brain tumor.”

Researchers are also developing personalized vaccines for the immune system to attack tumor cells, he said. Moreover, Carl said the field is rapidly evolving and technically advanced, which he enjoys and appreciates.

“A few places, like Brown, are developing research to create vaccines in which you take a piece of a tumor and send it off to identify the specific markers that are not on the normal cells,” explained Carl. “You insert a little capsule into a patient’s stomach for about two days, and let their immune system do what it does. Initial data suggests that it really helps…but these vaccines can increase life expectancies to two or three years.”

As a Spanish major, Carl said he is still using his language skills from Hamden Hall and Williams College in his spare time.

“I volunteer as a Spanish interpreter at the Rhode Island Free Clinic,” said Carl. “About 75 percent of its patients speak Spanish and being able to interpret and connect with them as a healthcare provider is amazing. It's actually one of my favorite things. I also presented a study at Brown to the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery that showed non-English speakers with a stroke come to the hospital with worse symptoms and have more functional impairments during their recovery.”

Carl’s life is busy, but he has found time to still enjoy the towns surrounding Brown.

“Providence has some wonderful restaurants,” said Carl. “And, I've made the best group of friends up here. Brown does a really great job of picking people who are good people. Not just the smartest people on Earth, though everyone in medical school is smart, but Brown attracts people who are really intentional about what they do and why they want to practice medicine.”