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Posted Sunday, July 22nd 2007, 4:00 AM

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• Katrina Firlik is a neurosurgeon who operates at Greenwich Hospital and teaches at Yale. She is also the author of "Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside" (Random House, $14.95). Her first case history involves the construction worker who came in with a two-inch nail in his frontal lobe (his partner accidentally shot him). She operated and he was home within 24 hours. In other cases, the outcome is not so good. Firlik says she cried once on the job because "I had to deliver a death sentence and I let my guard down." She's regretted it ever since. Obviously proud of being one of a minority of females in a field dominated by alpha males, Firlik tells a good story. One after another, in fact.

Sherryl Connelly