You probably don't know the name Christian Nolen , but he underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor while playing guitar.
Nolen began to notice some symptoms that were impacting his ability to play the instrument. “Christian was having problems on the left side of his body, primarily in his left hand,” Ricardo Komotar , MD, director of the brain tumor program at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at Miami Miller School of Medicine, Fox News .
The surgery took place ten days after the tumor was discovered, and the doctor explained why the procedure was performed this way: “When a tumor involves or is near a critical part of the brain – something that controls the ability to speak, understand language, or move – we want to perform the surgery while the patient is awake, so we can continuously monitor the patient and know if it starts to disrupt normal brain functions.”
At the beginning of the surgery, Nolen was sedated, but during a delicate part, he was woken up. The team gave him a guitar to play. “When I woke up, it was difficult to see everything around me and fight the natural reaction of sitting up.”
The patient played some songs he had been studying, such as those by System Of A Down and Deftones .
“When we were finalizing the case at the back of the tumor, we noticed that the function of his hand began to decline,” said Komotar. “The tumor was touching and interfacing with the part of the brain that controls hand movement. Fortunately, we were able to remove the entire tumor without harming the hand.”
