Singing For Your Life: How Belting Out Tunes Can Help You Survive Brain Surgery
One after another, the sound of some of Taylor Swift’s greatest hits are seeping out of the operating room. It’s a pretty weird thing to hear in a hospital: do the surgeons in this place have a lax attitude while they’re working? Well, in actual fact, the renditions of these songs are serving a vital purpose. A woman is in surgery right now, and her brain is being operated on — but she’s wide awake and singing her favorite songs while it’s happening! And this is a great sign.
A tough journey
The person in the operating theater singing Swift numbers that day was Selena Campione, and her journey to get to that point had been a tough one. A teacher in her mid-30s, Selena had gone through her life without any major health scares. But that suddenly changed when one side of her body started to feel numb and tingly.
It was her right side that felt weird, and she naturally sought medical advice. That kickstarted a journey that saw her sent from one doctor to another, hoping for answers that never came. To begin with, nobody could say what was wrong with her.
“Getting worse and worse”
The situation was a scary one. A previously healthy young woman had suddenly succumbed to a mysterious condition that interfered with her life — and nobody seemed able to help her. Selena was prescribed a bunch of different medications by different doctors, but nothing seemed to work.
And, to make matters even more terrifying, her condition wasn’t static. At the end of March 2024 Selena spoke to Today about what had happened to her, noting, “Over a course of time, it kept getting worse and worse.”
“Lots of unknowns”
Selena visited several neurologists during this time. Her blood was tested for different illnesses, and she underwent repeated MRI examinations, yet still nobody could say what was wrong with her. This frustrating process went on for several months. “I was being led down different paths and different treatments,” Selena told Today, “with lots of unknowns.”
Anyone who’s ever been in a similar position, of knowing something was wrong with them, but without ever being told what it was, will appreciate the terrible position Selena was in. It was a grueling time.
Deteriorating condition
And all the while, Selena’s condition continued to deteriorate. “My face would get so swollen it would get stuck and I wouldn’t be able to speak,” she explained, “then I couldn’t feel anything on the right side of my body, so I wasn’t able to walk sometimes or use my right arm.”
On top of that, her blood pressure and heart rate would go through periods of being dangerously high. These episodes were so bad that she was forced to go to hospital more than once.
“Couldn’t get words out”
Selena also elaborated on her condition in a press release, laying bare just how bad things had got for her as time went by without a diagnosis. “There were days I would get up where I couldn’t walk,” she said.
“I couldn’t use my right hand,” she went on. “My face would swell up. I couldn’t speak, I would get stuck. I couldn’t get words out. And nobody knew what to do.”
Turning purple
Selena told Fox News about how the symptoms she experienced left her unable to walk with the ease she’d once taken for granted. “My right leg — I wouldn’t even feel it,” she explained. “I wouldn’t have feeling in my foot.” And that wasn’t all.
Some of Selena’s symptoms were frankly bizarre. At one stage, the color of her skin literally started to change. “Part of my skin would turn purple,” she recalled. “I wouldn’t feel anything at all.”
A breakthrough
Things continued in this bleak vein for a long time, until, finally, Selena was directed towards Dr. Nitesh Patel. Dr. Patel is a neurosurgical oncologist at Jersey Shore University Medical Center’s Hackensack Meridian Neuroscience Institute. Thanks to him, Selena’s period in the dark was about to come to an end.
Dr. Patel appreciated how hard this period of not knowing what was wrong must have been for Selena. “She’s young,” he told Today, “only 36 and having these very unusual symptoms, she felt like she was going crazy.” But thankfully, he had an idea of what was going on.
An idea and a plan
Dr. Patel thought a “mass” in Selena’s brain — on its left hand side, which controls the body’s right side — was the culprit. Selena recalled to Today, “After looking at my case, he phoned me and he mentioned a couple different brain-tumor types that he thought were causing my symptoms.”
There was a lead at last, and Dr. Patel had an idea for how he would treat this issue. But his plan made for a very scary prospect indeed. Dr. Patel suggested brain surgery was the way to go — and he also believed that Selena should be awake during the procedure.
Brain-mapping
In 2023 a piece of software called Quicktome Functional Connectome was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This enables the mapping-out of a person’s brain, allowing experts to see specific areas that are activated when undertaking different behaviors including “language, movement, and cognition.”
The Quicktome tech depicts these areas in specific colors. That means a surgeon can literally see what parts of the organ to take care of as they’re operating on a person’s brain. It was Dr. Patel’s intention to use this technology during his operation on Selena.
Awake brain surgery
And, as unsettling a prospect as it may have been, Dr. Patel’s plan would also require Selena to be awake throughout all of this. But here’s the thing: “awake brain surgery,” or “awake craniotomy,” isn’t as unusual as you might think. It can be done when treating tumors on the brain, or when a person suffers from epileptic seizures.
Awake brain surgery is important, because it can allow the surgeon to be sure that the area of the brain they’re working on is the right one. By communicating with the patient in real time, they can establish right then and there that they haven’t accidentally interfered with a part of the brain they shouldn’t have.
“Scared out of my mind”
Awake brain surgery is remarkably helpful for the medical professionals performing it, but it obviously makes for a terrifying prospect for those undergoing it. “I was scared out of my mind,” Selena told Fox News, speaking about the moment she learned of what Dr. Patel’s plan actually entailed.
“I couldn’t even believe that was a possibility,” she went on. “I didn’t even know that you could have brain surgery and be awake.” But that was the situation that now faced her. Things weren’t getting better, so she knew this was her only option.
Trusting the doc
Selena explained to Fox News just how bad things had become as her condition worsened. “It was hard on me, but it was also on my family, too… My girls are little. I missed my daughter’s birthday [because] I was in the hospital. I missed a ton of work. I missed my students.”
Things couldn’t go on like that, so she agreed to undergo the awake brain surgery. It was scary, but at least she felt safe under her surgeon’s care. “I trusted Dr. Patel’s judgment,” she said, “and I could see how confident he was that this is what I needed.”
What’s safe and what’s not
Dr. Patel spoke to Today about the benefits of awake brain surgery, noting that it means he is able to “carefully map out [what] is safe and what’s not safe to do.” By utilizing the Quicktome technology, he can protect the parts of the brain that need to be safeguarded.
He explained, “Before I make any irreversible steps, I can stimulate that part of the brain with a small electronic electric probe and get immediate feedback.” That means he knows where to avoid as he works to remove any problematic growth.
Critical real estate
Selena’s tumor was growing in the general area of her brain where speech and the movement of her right limbs are controlled. “The real estate, so to speak,” Dr. Patel told Today, utilizing a sort of property portfolio metaphor to make his point, “of the brain around the tumor is really critical.”
If he wanted to avoid damaging these vital parts of the brain, Dr. Patel knew he’d need Selena to be conscious during the operation. That way he could communicate with her and to make sure that everything was still functioning as it should.
A Q&A session
Speaking to Fox News, Dr. Patel laid out some of the things he would be looking for during Selena’s operation. “She can talk, she can repeat things, tell us her name, etc,” he said. “And while we’re stimulating the brain, if she has any errors in those actions, we know that’s a critical area.”
But there was another activity that Dr. Patel was keen for Selena to do during the operation. In fact, it was the activity he finds most useful for patients to engage in while he conducts operations such as this one. As you’ve probably guessed by now, he wanted Selena to sing.
A fun way of doing it
“We could do it the boring way,” Dr. Patel told Fox News, “or we can do it a bit more of an exciting way, and I found singing is particularly very helpful.” Of course, that’s not just a random decision on his part. There’s a lot going on when a person sings.
To sing, a person needs to control their speech, their cadence, their rhythm, and their memory, as they need to recall the correct lyrics. “The nice thing about singing,” Dr. Patel told Today, “is it covers all of that and in kind of a fun way.”
A huge Swiftie
When Selena learned of what was going to be required of her during the surgery, a plan formed right away: she knew exactly which songs she wanted to sing. “My two daughters are huge Taylor Swift fans,” Selena explained in a statement to the press, “and so am I.”
“I hear her music 24 hours a day, in my car, in my house. I could sing with her on stage if she wanted me to. So it just made sense to sing it during surgery. It helped me, I felt like my daughters were with me.”
Dr. Swiftie
As luck would have it, Dr. Patel was, by his own admission, something of a Swiftie himself. He knew the hits well, which was great for the purposes of the operation. If Selena “mis-phrases something or says a word the wrong way,” he would be able to “pick up” on the error.
Dr. Patel explained to Fox News, “Furthermore, it’s also testing her memory… She knows the lyrics; she should be able to sing the songs.” And if she tripped up somewhere, he’d know.
“Fun in the operating room”
While the prospect of the awake surgery was scary, Selena was comforted by the knowledge that she’d be allowed to sing her favorite Taylor Swift songs throughout. “It made me think of my children and my family,” Selena told Today, explaining her rationale. “It made me feel like they’re with me in the room and everything is going to be okay.”
As the operation loomed, Selena’s nurses, too, emphasized the singing as a way of ensuring their patient was relaxed. Selena said in the press release, “The nurses told me, ‘You are going to have fun in the operating room with Dr. Patel.’ I was like, ‘Really?’”
Not all fun and games
Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games. The singing was a great way of keeping Selena relaxed, but brian surgery, obviously, is a very risky business. There are numerous complications that might arise from such a procedure, and Selena had to face up to them.
It was possible her brain might swell, bleed, become infected, and ultimately become badly damaged. Her memory might be badly affected by the operation, or she might experience seizures after it was done. The lightheartedness of the singing couldn’t ever detract from these intimidating risks.
Belting out the hits
But something needed to be done, so Selena went into surgery with Dr. Patel on January 31, 2024. The surgeon worked to take out the troublesome tumor that had led to all the awful symptoms Selena was enduring, and all the while the patient herself belted out some of her favorite songs.
Selena sang some of Swift’s most popular numbers, including “Shake It Off,” “22,” and “Style.” And as she did it, the nurses sometimes joined in with her! It was a strange day for Selena, to be sure.
The head is numbed
Obviously a surgeon doesn’t just begin an awake craniotomy without anesthesia first being administered to the patient. From the eyebrows up, their head is left completely without feeling. The brain itself, meanwhile, doesn’t have pain receptors anyway.
Nothing will be felt by the patient throughout the awake surgery, which, considering what is about to happen, is most certainly a good thing. The procedure itself is pretty gnarly.
The removal of the skull
The patient’s head is fixed in place, to prevent them from moving in problematic ways as the surgery takes place. The surgeon needs to be extremely accurate, so a lack of movement is absolutely essential. Once that’s done, the next step is removing the skull.
That’s a frankly terrifying thought for those of us unaccustomed to the ins and outs of brain surgery, but it’s obviously a vital part of the process. It’s just so far beyond the realms of normality that most of us encounter on a day-to-day basis.
Making a few Swifties
The idea of a person being awake and happily singing Taylor Swift songs as their skull is being removed seems like a weird fantasy, but it’s real. This is what happened to Selena, and she got through it perfectly okay. “It was fantastic,” she said in her press release. “I didn’t feel anything.”
Selena’s nurses were a great comfort to her throughout this whole process. She said, “The nurses were holding my hand, walking me through everything and singing along with me. I even think I’ve turned the doctors into Swifties.”
“Didn’t feel a thing”
The idea of her daughters, too, was hugely comforting to Selena throughout the operation. “My daughters were with me the whole surgery,” she said in her statement to the press. “Knowing they would be singing right along with me, got me through the surgery.”
As for the pain — or lack thereof — Selena was left astonished. She told Today, “I still can’t believe that I didn’t feel anything... I think falling down and cutting your leg hurts more than this, believe it or not.”
Doing the Eras Tour
Despite the incredibly important, high-pressure task he was in the operating theater that day to complete, even Dr. Patel was able to pick up on the particular Taylor Swift songs that Selena was singing, with her brain exposed. “Basically, she did the Eras Tour for us,” he told Fox News with a chuckle.
“I don’t want to discount the complexity of everything that’s involved in doing a brain surgery,” he continued. “But at the same time, I feel like the only way to really help patients get through the shock of going through any type of brain surgery is to have a touch of humor.”
A great success
The most important thing about this whole story is that the surgery, in the end, was a success. Dr. Patel managed to remove the tumor, which had been benign. Things, really, couldn’t have gone much better for Selena, whose life had been so badly affected over the previous months.
Things really could have gone another way. But thanks to the immense efforts of her medical team, Selena emerged from her scary surgery in good health. She was on the road to recovery.
“I didn’t even know my head was open”
Reflecting on her experience of the surgery to Fox News, Selena said, “I felt nothing. I didn’t know anything was going on. I didn’t even know my head was open.” Her time in the operating theater had been so relaxed that she’d barely been aware of what had been going on.
Later, though, when it was all said and done, Selena was able to sit down and watch the footage of her own brain surgery! Certain sections of the procedure had been filmed, meaning later she had the bizarre experience of watching herself go through this strange ordeal.
Taylor in the operating room
Selena watched the video with her two girls by her side. “My older one thinks that I could have sang a little better,” she told Today, “and my little one likes to tell her teacher and all her friends that Taylor Swift was in the operating room with me.”
Of course, things had initially been very frightening for the two kids. “They were very scared at first,” Selena explained, “we all were, but now when they look at the videos they think it’s pretty cool.”
“A little embarrassing”
In her press release, Selena admitted that, while the footage of her performing the Swift songs in surgery is fascinating and makes for an unquestionably interesting anecdote, it does betray her in one respect. The videos demonstrate that her singing wasn’t quite a match for Swift!
“I mean, it’s a little embarrassing, of course,” she said. “I don’t think Taylor Swift is going to want me to be on stage with her anytime soon.” Maybe so, but the important thing is that everything went well — and all the singing played its part.
“100 percent better”
Less than two months after the brain surgery had been completed, Selena was in a great place. She was experiencing none of the troublesome symptoms that had been plaguing her in the run-up to the procedure, while the amount of meds she was on had decreased dramatically.
“I am 100 percent better than I was, which is amazing,” she told Today, “and I can’t be more grateful for my doctors and the rest of the care team.” She still needed to attend check-ups, but, generally speaking, her life was back on track.
A cheeky request
Given her serious health issues of the last year, Selena, understandably, has never been able to attend any of the concerts on Swift’s Eras Tour. That’s a shame, to be sure, but the tour will rumble on until the end of 2024. In other words, there’s still plenty of time.
That fact hasn’t been lost on Selena. In fact, she even quipped to Fox News that if Swift wants to give her some free tickets, “that would be awesome.” Who knows? Perhaps her cheeky request will bear fruit?
A classical singer in the operating room
Selena’s story is an incredible one, but it’s actually not unique. There are plenty of instances of people undergoing awake brain surgery who have been asked to perform a musical number or two. And some of the performances beggar belief.
One example is when Ambrož Bajec-Lapajne, a Slovenian classical singer, was undergoing brain surgery to remove a tumor. He performed Winterreise by Franz Schubert, which must have been quite the treat for the medical team.
A piano backing
Ambrož had received his tumor diagnosis in 2014 and the surgery was scheduled for that same year. As in Selena’s case, it was necessary that he remained conscious throughout the procedure, so his brain functions could be tested to ensure no mistakes had been made.
And what better way for the surgical team to assess Ambrož’s state than to have him sing with that magnificent voice of his? So, a piano track was arranged to play inside the operating room, to which Ambrož was then able to sing along.
Another success
Parts of Ambrož’s surgery were recorded and later uploaded to YouTube, where the clip has since racked up about 1.8 million views. Clearly, a lot of people are interested in seeing someone sing beautifully while their skull is wide open!
The surgery, thankfully, went well. In the video’s description, Ambrož updated people on his condition. He said, “It’s been more than a year since and I’m doing fine, continuing my professional singing career.”
A violinist’s tremor
It’s not just singers who get to show off their skills during awake brain surgery. Naomi Elishuv was a successful violinist with Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra when her performances started to become difficult. She’d developed a tremor, which made playing well basically impossible.
For a professional string player, this was a disastrous development. It could have spelled the end of her career, but there was still one intervention available to her: she’d need to go into the operating theater.
In control
The plan was to treat Naomi through a technique known as deep brain stimulation, or DBS. This, in basic terms, meant an electrode would need to be implanted into her brain, which could then rectify the misfiring signals that caused her tremor. The only thing was, of course, that she’d need to be awake for it.
Naomi played her violin during the surgery, opting to perform some Mozart. A video was shot of parts of her surgery, and, at one stage, someone asks her how she is. Her reply is composed: she says, “I am in control.” Certainly, her performance backs that up!
Playing the sax
A jazz saxophone player has also found himself in the strange position of doing his thing as surgeons operate on his brain. Carlos Aguilera had a tumor that needed to be removed, but he was terrified that such an operation might wreck his ability to improvise on his beloved instrument.
So, the surgeons had him play the sax as they worked. It’s pretty impressive in its own way that the medical team were able to stay composed with that loud instrument blaring in their ears; they proved ultimate pros!
An incredible job
Undergoing awake brain surgery must be a terrifying experience to have to go through. But people do get through it, and, as Selena and these other professional musicians have proven, they generally emerge on the other side in a healthier state.
Of course, special credit needs to be given to the people actually doing this amazing work. And that’s because the medical teams involved in operations such as these are saving people’s lives.