Singing Schubert While Having Brain Surgery, No Bigs
August 14, 2015 2:59 PM   Subscribe

 
The compassion the nurse/assistant shows at the 2:45 mark, when I'm sure he was just completely beside himself with fear, is quite moving.
posted by sutt at 3:11 PM on August 14, 2015


The compassion the nurse/assistant shows...

Reading the Youtube comments, she is in fact a doctor in neuropsychology.
posted by sutt at 3:12 PM on August 14, 2015 [12 favorites]


Oh wow. So surreal, so beautiful.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:48 PM on August 14, 2015


Apart from anything else, he's very, very good. My heart was in my throat when he slurred off -- what a beautiful instrument and what a talented musician.
posted by KathrynT at 4:05 PM on August 14, 2015 [2 favorites]


Humans: actually pretty cool on occasion
posted by theodolite at 4:14 PM on August 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


Technically not opera but rather from the song cycle Winterreise, but still beautiful and touching...
posted by jim in austin at 4:17 PM on August 14, 2015 [3 favorites]


The idea of this post is super, super cool, but noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope.
posted by Aizkolari at 4:50 PM on August 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


This is particularly compelling to me. Last week I was down in the Cleveland Clinic where I had a craniotomy to remove a schwannoma from my brain. This is probably really ... silly, well, no, it's not probably silly - but there was some concern due to the location of the tumor that there was potential danger to certain cranial nerves, and so those nerves would need to be tested during the procedure. I was desperately afraid about the entire thing (having never had surgery for anything) but I was more concerned, to the point, that they would have to wake me up at various points to have me do things like talk and interact and move facial muscles - and that was just too much for me.

So what I did is completely ignored that aspect. I did not ask the doctor or the nurse or anyone else on the team at any point about it. I was like, "Hey, I have to have the surgery either way, I'm sure if it has to happen like that then at some point someone will mention it to me, but I'm not fucking asking about shit because I don't want to know."

Until finally I was in the OR and they were slipping the thing around my mouth and I was like, "Hey, you don't have to wake me up at any point, right?" And everyone laughed, and thank God.

I think that was the last thing I said.

No! The real last thing I said was, "Hey, be sure to wake me up every couple hours so we can tweet this." I honestly said that.

So, kudos to this guy, for sure.

And also, I'm sure I'm not alone out there, but I'm siting here at home in bed with my laptop looking at a long stretch of not going back to work and feeling like I got hit by a bus and I just want to say, first, thanks to people who do brain surgery, because you are great and I love you, and if I had been born 50 years ago or 100 years ago or 200 years ago I would have just slowly lost coordination and the ability to think clearly and my senses would have started to go sideways and I would have just died... so, huzzah, science, for saving my sorry ass.

And also for not making me have to be awake while you did it.
posted by kbanas at 4:56 PM on August 14, 2015 [26 favorites]


I feel like he should show this at all his future auditions. Like, "if this is how well I can perform while my brain is being literally cut into, imagine how great I can be when only under the pressure of performing in front of hundreds or thousands of people!"
posted by yasaman at 5:01 PM on August 14, 2015 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I clicked for the "cool medical procedure" aspect and found myself spellbound by his voice. It's amazing.

Also, you can't see any of the actual surgery in the video -- it's behind an operating curtain. You see his face and his (non-operating) neurologist who is helping him run through the musical tests as they operate. He does slur off in a few places where they have hit a bit they DON'T want to remove ... so they then DO NOT REMOVE THAT BIT and he goes back to normal! And yeah -- the compassion of the neurologist is amazing, she is extremely reassuring, has a great bedside manner.

And he has been well and performing for a year since the surgery, and posted it himself to YouTube, if either of those things concerned you before watching!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:11 PM on August 14, 2015 [8 favorites]


I wept.
posted by AteYourLembas at 7:25 PM on August 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


I sure hope there are strong anti-anxiety meds that are compatible with whatever anaesthesia is needed for that kind of operation. I couldn't imagine getting through that kind of thing without them, and in *his* case they're basically poking around the edges of what he needs to have to continue the musical career he's devoted his life to. Talk about bravery.
posted by uosuaq at 7:42 PM on August 14, 2015


uosuaq: "I sure hope there are strong anti-anxiety meds that are compatible with whatever anaesthesia is needed for that kind of operation"

When I had a C-section where I had to be awake, they wouldn't give me any anti-anxiety meds before the baby was delivered, because anything I had was also going to the baby through the umbilicus. But after the baby was delivered, I begged, "NOW CAN I HAVE SOMETHING?" and they injected something TOTALLY RELAXING.

The nurses were very practiced in taking people who did not want to be awake into awake surgery. I was very panicked, but they made it very cool. My first C-section I had a panic attack for more than 30 minutes until they injected me with cool drugs; my second one, I was totes chatting with the anesthesiologist about basketball because I was like "IT'S TOTES COOL DUDE" for the second one.

But yeah, I very much feel like awake surgery is the horrifying moment of modern surgery. If you are calm for the surgery, you can feel when they push the baby out of you, and you can feel when they yank the baby up and are all like "Hey, this uterus it totally empty now!" VERY WEIRD.

I begged and cried for a surgery that involved being knocked out, but NOPE, you have to be awake for them to deliver a baby from your abdomen.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:38 PM on August 14, 2015 [1 favorite]


So my husband is a professional classical violinist who is being assessed for brain surgery next month. If it's a go, he'll have to play his violin during the surgery. When I told him about "the opera singer who sang through brain surgery" he sighed and said, "Singers. You can never get them to shut up."
He was kidding of course, riffing on the long-standing rivalry between classical vocalists and instrumentalists.
posted by angiep at 9:29 PM on August 14, 2015 [11 favorites]


Brains, eh? So delicate and yet so resilient.

I sang all through my hip surgery, but nothing classical. I just sang along to whatever was on the radio. I specifically remember really belting out The Police's "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic." They teased me about that one during my whole hospital stay.

The doctor doing one of my hand surgeries told me I sang "some sad French song," but I guess the amnesiac effects of the heavy sedation worked properly at that time.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:24 AM on August 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


At 2:45, the person doing the surgery was probably thinking one thing and one thing only: "Oh fuck oh FUCK OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK"
posted by BiggerJ at 6:26 AM on August 15, 2015


At 2:45, the person doing the surgery was probably thinking one thing and one thing only: "Oh fuck oh FUCK OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK"

Given that the patient lost and regained his abilities several times, they must have been doing something to test bits of brain tissue without removing them. It's not like the surgeon was like, "oop, let me just stitch that piece back into place...there we go!"
For the patient, it was like suddenly having a pretty major stroke.

"No no no...don't tug on that. You don't know what it might be attached to." -- Buckaroo Banzai
posted by uosuaq at 4:41 PM on August 15, 2015 [1 favorite]


I just realized something about the particulars of that situation. You test a part, he slurs his speech and it's heartbreaking - and then you have to wait for the music to reach a part where he sings again so you can find out if you damaged something. And wait. And wait. And WAIT. You would die a thousand times inside from the gnawing uncertainty.
posted by BiggerJ at 8:22 PM on August 15, 2015


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