- Daniel Pierce: Life awaits. Meaningful friendships, inspiring work, independence, your place in the world. They're all just waiting outside your door. Now imagine if that door was locked. No key, no side exit, you're trapped, while everybody else blossoms around you. That's what it feels like growing up with a mental illness.
- Daniel Pierce: So, while gamma knife surgery can disable the neurological circuit where this patient's O.C.D. impulses form, it can't make up for lost time. Surgery can't teach us how to take care of ourselves... or how to recognize feelings like love, or loss, or possibility. We all have to figure out who we are beyond our diagnosis. It's a long process that begins with learning how to trust our own minds again.
- Daniel Pierce: Of course, there are plenty of mental illnesses that cannot be fixed with surgery. But as Mr. Lewicki no doubt discovered during his whirlwind weekend, neurologists are a crazy bunch. Crazy enough to believe that if you can discover a viable cure for one illness, then eventually... you'll discover a cure for the next one. Which means... There's hope for all of us.