Brain Surgery: A D.I.Y. Guide
Wonderful news for cheap people and kids looking to make a quick buck this summer: doctors at Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston live-tweeted some light brain surgery today, making it easier than ever to recreate the experience at home.
The surgery, in which a seizure-inducing tumor was removed from the brain of a 21-year-old woman, was documented via a combination of text tweets, (graphic) images, and (oh, boy, really graphic) videos, including some taken from the surgeon's microscope, which gave a super close-up view of the action.
You can follow the whole procedure from start to finish on Memorial Hermann's Storify page. (Scroll down to the bottom and click "Read next page" if you're desperate to get to the part with blood.)
And, honestly? It's not exactly brain surgery. A stiff drink to calm your nerves and you could bang this out, no problem.
Here's a quick step-by-step guide for those looking for a fun, quirky date idea:
Step 1: Shave patient's head. (NOT the whole head. This is a classic rookie mistake, but you really only need to shave the part of the head where you'll be working, and that's a relatively small area. The doctors at Memorial Hermann worked within a 2x2 inch square.)
Step 2: Get on inside that head. A good way to do this is by removing a piece of the skull, which you can then hand to an attending nurse for safekeeping. There's an opportunity for comedy here. Maybe pretend you just sneezed it out? Maybe act like you pulled it from behind her ear and tell her she needs to be more thorough about her hygiene and then fire her? Read the room and go from there.
Step 3: Locate and remove the tumor. This is a crucial step, because otherwise you're just dicking around inside someone's brain for nothing.
Step 4: Be passionate. This is just great advice in general.
Step 5: Put everything back the way you found it, minus the tumor. According to the Twitter feed,
"Unlike other bones in the human body, the skull does not need pressure for bones to join during the healing process"
so you should pretty much be able to slap everything together however and have it work out alright.
Though punctuated by fewer moments of whimsy than several seasons of Scrubs might have prepared us to expect, the whole affair was actually really engrossing. (Fun fact: The surgery was performed by Dr. Dong Kim, part of the neurosurgery team that treated former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords following her gunshot injury.)
Best of all, now that you know the four-hour surgery has already been successfully completed, you can re-live the experience without panicking the whole time.
Memorial Hermann had previously livetweeted both an open-heart surgery and a colonoscopy.
They're really going to put themselves out of business with these little stunts.
[Memorial Hermann Storify via Mashable // Image via Shutterstock]