This is one of the few wonderfully morbid scenes I feel ashamed to enjoy. But I'm glad you get it. (I can't believe I missed this. Thanks, for the bump!)
Look up the movie "The English Doctor". The part with using this wire-garotte thing to saw the skull open to do surgery. Gruesome sounds, but fascinating. Anyway...
Oh, it's a movie of an actual brain surgeon. He's got to deal some heavy, hard shit to people with terminal brain cancers. You get to hang in that room where he tells the pretty, bright and cheery twenty-something young woman that she's only got less than a year to live, I think.