Brazilian Banker Sings and Plays Guitar While Getting Brain Tumor Removed
"Snow White's" song about getting over a hard task by whistling while you work may have been what one Brazilian banker had in mind during brain surgery.
Anthony Kullkamp Dias has got all those hardworking whistlers out there beat by singing and tickling guitar strings while undergoing brain surgery.
The Hospital Nossa Senhora da Conceicao in Brazil reports that Dias, a banker who has been playing guitar for 20 years, belted out a total of six songs while his doctors performed surgery to remove his brain tumor, according to CNN.
The conscious patient played "Yesterday" by the Beatles, as well as few Brazilian songs, and he even performed an original tune called "Emanuel," which was dedicated to his newborn baby boy.
Dias, who was awake and speaking during the surgery, was actually helping his doctors to monitor and map his brain for possible injuries to areas that control motor function and speech that could have been damaged as he had the tumor removed.
Talking with TV Globo, Dias revealed that he had found out about his brain tumor a few days before his son was born, and that the inspiration to play the guitar and sing while the surgery was taking place came to him a day before he went in for the operation.
Brain tissue -- for those of who don’t remember or are not familiar with the 2001 “Hannibal” scene where Anthony Hopkin’s Lecter fed Ray Liotta bits of his own just removed prefrontal cortex -- does not actually register any pain.
Time reports the so-called “awake surgery” was first pioneered decades ago for epilepsy patients. The point of keeping the patients awake was for surgeons to see if they were in fact successfully destroying the brain tissue that was responsible for their seizures.
Ninety percent of Dias’ tumor was removed.
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