So on my grocery list I have craniectomy,
bone flap craniotomy,
excision meningioma, and it comes to a neat
232 thousand seven hundred and thirty six dollars and 56 cents.
What a bargain.
Don't worry I have insurance but man this makes me worry about people who don't.
There are so many things I want to tell you and also so many things
I really don't want to tell you but bottom line is that I'm fine surgery went really well
I can see out of both of my eyes and
my brain seems to be working just as fine, or as poorly as it was before.
I had grade one meningioma
and it seems like a "good" brain tumor to have
but talking about a good brain tumor feels a little bit like
talking about a "fun" traffic jam.
There's nothing good or fun about them. They just...
...suck different amounts.
So I named my tumor Brian the brain tumor because
things just get less scary if you name them and he had like definitely made himself comfortable
in there and had grown into my jaw muscle and into my eye orbit and into my bone
so now I have titanium mesh in the bone that separates my brain from my eye and I don't think that's a party trick
that's gonna give me a lot but still...
The scar though!
it's a pretty significant upgrade considering that my second coolest scar...
...is from removing a birthmark on my butt.
So the days before surgery, I was like this weird combination of terrified and also really calm
Um... 'cause it's like you it's out of your control,
there's nothing you can do about it and my mom and my sister was there and Scott...
...who works with me and is also one of my best friends and we had to get up at 4:30 a.m
to go to the hospital and I had started writing these letters to like people the people I love,
just being like hey, I don't know if I'm gonna be myself for a while so...
...I just wanted to remind you that I really love you, etc. etc. etc. and
it was...
...just the fucking saddest thing I've ever done and I just couldn't finish the letters 'cause I was like
this is terrible, screw these letters. I'm just gonna have to wake up fine 'cause I don't wanna have to do this...
...and I did wake up fine.
Surgery took nine hours and I came out of anesthesia
just overhearing this nurse talking about how I am on YouTube
because I think she had seen me talk at some event here in San Francisco
so she was like "Don't you know who she is?!
She's famous!" to the other nurses and it was such a like weird and surreal thing...
...to wake up to so I was just like:
please subscribe
No, I did not say that...
...but I had told my family to tweet an update as soon as they knew how the surgery
had went because I knew that a lot of you are waiting and that you were worried.
They tweeted that I had said something inappropriate and the inappropriate thing that I said was my surgeon...
His name was Dr. Reddy, which is like the best name of a doctor ever but before surgery
I forbid myself from like joking about his name because you don't want to like upset the person who's...
...about to shave your head when you're unconscious.
I feel like neurosurgeons...
They wouldn't let themselves do a bad job on the brain
but he could definitely have gone a little bit more creative with the shaving.
So, Dr. Reddy came over as I was getting out of anesthesia, and he was like,
"Hey Simone, how are you feeling?" and the first thing I said after 9 hours of surgery was
"Hi Dr. Reddy...
...do people make a lot of puns about your name?"
and my family was like oh my God, she's still herself.
By the way, just the paranthesis. Dr. Reddy was so great.
I'm not an expert but he seems to have done an okay job on my brain
But um, he was also just so nice and pleasant and funny. Just great. Thanks. Dr. Reddy!
I spent two days at the hospital and those days were really not fun
I was pretty much constantly throwing up and vomiting and my hips hurt really badly from laying down so much
and I could like walk up and down the hallway but that was pretty much it.
Also I got this really weird thing where I had air trapped inside of my head
because when you have craniotomy, there can be like air bubbles that are inside of your skull...
...and
it meant that every time I would move my head there would be this like weird
"bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop" sound...
...and also in certain positions there would be this like dripping sound. It sounded like like water drops in a cave like *water dropping sounds*
Bloop and I guess it was just like spinal fluid dripping off of my brain
So that was fun
also
My most sincere apologies to the nurse that helped me shower
Because I obviously had a catheter for surgery and when they put it in they like inflate a balloon in your bladder
because
It's more fun that way? so they had removed it just earlier that day. So when I was in the shower with a nurse, I
Made like the longest fart it was like long and loud
And I was like, oh my god. I'm so sorry, but that did not come from my butt that came from my pee hole
I'm really sorry. I couldn't help it. So the weeks of surgery. I've been feeling better and better
I don't seem to have lost any cognitive abilities and my eyesight is still 20/20 at first
I kind of look like Gollum. Or like Smeagol, right?
As he transitions to Gollum and then I kind of started looking like the evil kid in Toy Story
I still kind of do but it's definitely gotten a lot better
but pretty much all I did was like lay around on this lap during my garden and
Eat a lot of food because I had to take a bunch of steroids
To reduce the swelling of my brain and it made me so hungry
and so angry I was riding in a car with my friend and we're trying to find parking in a parking lot and
I started giving people the finger which I don't think I've ever done previously in my life. My friend was like Simone
You can't flip people off. What are you doing? It was like these people are moving so fucking slowly
It's like they had brain surgery. I don't think I've ever been this angry in my entire life angry and hungry
Now I'm just like happy and hungry
a lot of people on Twitter have asked me if I have like changed personality since surgery which
Just for like the record is a pretty rough question to ask somebody who just went through brain surgery like it's fine with me
But just for like future reference, but yeah, of course
I've changed personality not because like the surgeon like slipped with a scalpel or sneezed or something like that
But just because I've gone through this pretty major thing and major things change you no matter if you want it or not
I think long-term
It's actually gonna be a really positive thing. people should be faced with losing
Everything a little bit more often because it really helps put a lot of things into perspective
and I
I mean I had kind of come to terms with the thought of like not only losing my life but losing everything that made up my
life and losing everything that made up me and
Waking up and feeling fine and feeling more like myself
is like the biggest relief of my entire life and
Everything just felt like it was shiny and beautiful and I was like, I can't believe I'm fine
So the six weeks of recovery is over today
Which means that I'm gonna get back to a pretty normal schedule
I'm obviously still not fully recovered, but I'm allowed to walk up and down stairs myself
and I am allowed to lift more than five pounds. So that's really exciting
Also last minute we decided to hire a documentary filmer
so I have a bunch of footage from before surgery around surgery and in recovery
and we still haven't figured out what to do with that, but there might be
Something down the line. Well, we'll see. it's so good to be back
Thanks for like
going through this super weird experience with me
Having all of you in such a real and concrete way made it a lot more bearable.
I'd rate having a brain tumor
2 out of 10 stars
It wasn't that great. But you know what they say about brain tumors
They really grow on you. I'm so sorry. It's such a bad joke. I can't.
Blame Bryan for that joke. Ok. Byeee