A good
friend of mine sent me a link to this NY Times article by Karl Oveknausgaard,
which is subtitled “A witness in an operating room where the patients are
conscious.” Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-on-the-terrible-beauty-of-brain-surgery.html
The
article is about a famous British neurosurgeon, Henry Marsh who allowed Oveknausgaard
to interview him and watch in Tirana,
Albania as he demonstrated a surgical procedure he helped pioneer, “… called
awake craniotomy, that had never been performed in Albania. The procedure is
used to remove a kind of brain tumor that looks just like the brain itself.” (Interestingly,
the article never mentions the type of brain tumor.)
The
“awake craniotomy” procedure is used to remove a kind of brain tumor that looks
just like the brain itself. Oveknausgaard writes that “Such tumors are most
common in young people, and there is no cure for them.”
He
goes on to write that “In order for the surgeon to be able to distinguish
between tumor and healthy brain tissue, the patient is kept awake throughout
the operation, and during the procedure the brain is stimulated with an
electric probe, so that the surgeon can see if and how the patient reacts.”
This
just makes my skin crawl.
I’ve
first read about this type of surgery in Suzy Becker’s book, “I’ve had brain
surgery, what’s your excuse?” and the thought gave me the chills then, and I’m
still chilled reading about it years later. http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Surgery-Excuse-Becker-Paperback/dp/B00POEURZ0/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1453403913&sr=8-2-fkmr1&keywords=i%27ve+had+brain+surgery+what%27s+your+excuse+suzy+becker
So
why do this? That question is definitively answered when Oveknausgaard notes
that: “The procedure is used to remove a kind of brain tumor that looks just
like the brain itself.
Such tumors are most common in young people, and there
is no cure for them.
In order for the surgeon to be able to
distinguish between tumor and healthy brain tissue, the patient is kept awake
throughout the operation, and during the procedure the brain is stimulated with
an electric probe, so that the surgeon can see if and how the patient reacts.”
Now
if doesn’t make you a bit nervous, Oveknausgaard writes that Marsh “… explained
the awake craniotomy procedure, saying that for a neurosurgeon, it is a
constant temptation to try to remove the entire tumor, but if you go too far,
if you remove too much, the consequences can be severe. It may lead to full or
partial paralysis of one side of the body or other functional impairments or
personality changes. When the patient is awake, this allows the surgeon first
of all to determine where the dividing line lies, and second, to observe the
consequences of the procedure directly and immediately, and stop before any
serious damage is done.”
For
those of you who love morbid details, here’s a sneak couple of sentences by Oveknausgaard
writing about the operation itself: “The silence was total. The single focus of
attention was a head clamped in a vise in the middle of the room. The upper
part of the skull had been removed, and the exposed edge covered in layer after
layer of gauze, completely saturated with blood, forming a funnel down into the
interior of the cranium. The brain was gently pulsating within. It resembled a
small animal in a grotto. Or the meat of an open mussel.”
The
article is fascinating, upsetting, informative and penetrating (in more ways
than one).
Here, again, is the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/magazine/karl-ove-knausgaard-on-the-terrible-beauty-of-brain-surgery.html
Picture:
Dr. Mentor Petrela and Dr. Artur Xhumari close up the head of Ilmi Hasanaj. The
author, Karl Ove Knausgaard, stands second from right.
Credit
Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum, for The New York Times
