In what can only be called astonishing, a girl was apparently operated on, while she was playing Candy Crush. The girl in issue is a 10-year-old named Nandini, who was being operated to remove a tumor from her brain, and the little one went through it with support of her love for Candy Crush.
According to ToI, Nandini was up and active during the operation. She was brought to the SIMS hospital in Chennai with complaints of fits. Diagnosis of her symptoms showed a tumour in a vital part of the brain, which is responsible for the movement of the left part of the body, the report added. Speaking to her family member, Dr Roopesh Kumar told them that there is a risk paralysis if the tumour keeps growing further. And because the problem area was so critical, the doctor decided to operate on her when she was awake.
“I did not want to go in for the conventional method of removing the tumour. It was in the sensitive part of the brain and if we accidentally touched a wrong nerve, it could cause complete paralysis of left half of her body,” the doctor was quoted as saying by ToI.
Nandini’s uncle said he was in the operating room while his niece was being operated on. “Nandini was playing Candy Crush on my cellphone. She moved her hands and legs when we asked her to do so. The surgeon had to make sure that the point he is operating on does not affect her mobility. She was brave,” Nandini’s uncle told Expatmedia.
Reportedly, surgeries of this nature are performed on just about two percent of adult patients with brain tumours, but is rarely done on a child, Dr Suresh Bapu, director of SIMS Institute of Neurosciences told ToI. He added that patients do not feel any pain as neurons in the brain do not have any pain receptors.
In a similar case, earlier this year, a musician in Bengaluru underwent a seven-hour brain surgery in the city’s hospital to correct a neurological disorder, and the patient played a guitar during the procedure.