Dr. Gloria Villalba, neurosurgeon at the Hospital del Mar in Barcelona, has not had a good night.
The hours spent awake are barely noticeable on her serene and calm face, much less in the enthusiasm that her words convey, but the day before this interview she had a complex operation, with more unfavorable results than she expected.
She still ruminates on what went wrong—if anything—.
“She was an elderly person with a very malignant tumor in a complicated area of the brain.
The surgery went very well, we were able to remove almost the entire tumor, but when we began to close, the neurophysiologist says that the patient has lost the motor potential [mobility] of the left side.
We didn't understand anything.
Complications can happen, we and the families know it, but when it happens to someone, she is angry that I can't recover from, wondering if I could have done something, going over everything... But nothing went wrong.
It was bad luck.
“I don't forgive myself,” this 48-year-old doctor from Barcelona with more than 5,000 brain surgeries behind her nods, hurt.
Gloria Villalba.Vicens Giménez
Villalba tames sick brains with his own hands and puts dysfunctional neural circuits on track.
He saves lives every day, but he doesn't allow himself to stumble.
She is tough, with herself and with others, she takes self-demand to the limit in a character chiseled by the profession.
"I was not like that.
They have made me this way to survive in a harsh world.
You must have this character, if not, they will eat you,” reflects the neurosurgeon, a leader in innovation in neuromodulation to treat mental disorders.
Daughter of Andalusian migrants, and the first in her family to go to University, she fell in love “at first sight” with neurosurgery.
A world of men and egos.
“A woman who wants to be a neurosurgeon is going to have a hard time.
She must be passionate about it because she is very tough.
There is a hidden machismo.
They judge you all day.
Be careful not to make any mistakes and be careful if you wear makeup and heels, because then you have to show that you are not stupid,” she warns.
Live by and for the profession.
Neither married nor with children, “by personal decision,” she pours her world into her work.
She is the first to arrive at the hospital and the last to leave.
She has changed or suspended vacations and has not disconnected the phone for three years.
“I am passionate and obsessed with my work.
I can't disconnect.
And I really like doing guard duty [I do 12 a month].
I'm crazy?
Don't know.
They are very intense and very hard, but they put your feet on the ground.
The real thing is what happens in the guard, like a person killed in a car accident that you have to inform the family about.
It's reality.
"We must not forget."
Hardened in the operating rooms of a hospital that is sheltered between the sand of the Mediterranean and the Barceloneta neighborhood, she says she has seen it all.
Even a brain pierced by a nail.
She specializes in neuro-oncology and operates on malignant tumors like that of that patient who stole her sleep last night, but she is also the reference at the vascular surgery center to intervene on aneurysms, which are very dangerous bulges in the blood vessels that, if they break, can cause terrible brain hemorrhages.
He admits that he likes challenges.
And if there is something that stirs his enthusiasm, it is innovation in neuromodulation.
That is, procedures such as deep brain stimulation that allow the electrical activity of this organ to be modulated through electrodes implanted in the brain to correct dysfunctions and treat neurological and psychiatric diseases.
“Nothing excites me more as a neurosurgeon than interfering in a circuit that explains a disease.”
Villalba operates in an operating room at the Hospital del Mar on a patient suffering from a malignant brain tumor.Vicens Giménez
Villalba looks for solutions for patients without therapeutic alternatives.
She is one of the few neurosurgeons in the world who has applied deep brain stimulation to people with severe anorexia: a trial in her hospital with eight patients found that, in half, this technique managed to improve their symptoms of depression, obsession and anxiety.
“What fulfills me most is being able to offer something to someone who has no other solution,” she says.
Also an expert in pain surgery, she is testing a technique for patients with neuropathic pain with no other treatment options: by modulating an area of the brain, she makes the pain stop caring.
She explains that, although she continues to hurt them, that pain takes a backseat.
His head doesn't stop.
Now he suspects a trial with deep brain stimulation in cocaine addiction that would be a pioneer in Europe and also designs how to apply neuromodulation to patients in a coma: “Let's see if we can modulate a part of the brain that is responsible for consciousness and improve it so that can communicate with the family.
“It would be something wonderful.”
He doesn't set limits.
If anything, he says, let the bureaucratic obstacles or his team put them in his way, if he goes too far and one day finds himself playing God.
Villalba touches the sky and returns to earth in each operating room.
All of her patients have a part of her, she takes her stories home and suffers with them.
The worst thing about her job, she regrets, is giving bad news, not being able to do anything.
Surrounded by alleged gods of flesh and blood, she declares herself agnostic.
She's seen too many dramas to believe in anything other than science.
“You live better if you are a believer because you have something to hold on to.
But I see so many misfortunes that it is difficult for me to think that there is something that can help us.”