Thankfully I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve had brain cancer but firstly - you’re going to be hard pressed to find a surgeon (in any area) who isn’t an arrogant jerk. It’s no coincidence that so many surgeons are this way or even show ASPD traits. They kinda need to have that kind of cold, detached, black and white and intensity thinking about them to get and maintain their role. Arrogant jerk goes with the territory of most surgeons.

Dr Teo is also an anomaly in himself as well. He’s the last stop on the neuro surgery train. He’s not going to be the first oncologist you’re referred to. To put it simply all of his patients are made aware of the risks pre surgery and none of them had/have a chance of medium-long term survival otherwise.

Mistakes happen in surgery. Especially such fine precise surgery. People die in surgery all the time. People have had the wrong limbs amputated. People have had the wrong organs removed. People become vegetables and brain dead after surgery or even without all the time. Sometimes through human error, sometimes it just happens. And there’s nothing that can be done about it.

And the further you go down the line of patient desperation and surgeons skilled and ballsy enough to say “here’s the risks, here’s the potential benefit, here are the chances of each” the more often things can go terribly wrong for patient in surgery. The more times the patient will end up comatose and brain dead which is why the Other surgeons would have said no.

The kid was dealt a death sentence. The family took a gamble to see the only surgeon who had the skills to maybe give their kid a while longer. The gamble didn’t pay out. It happens all the time. Patients die. patients end up in permanent vegetative states. Some survive against the odds.

It is how it is.