No matter how metal you think you are, you’ll never be as metal as Christian Nolen, a guitar-wielding rocker who turned his brain surgery into a hardcore jam session.
After being diagnosed with a brain tumor, Nolen’s doctors, including renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Ricardo Komotar, decided he needed to undergo a procedure known as an ‘awake craniotomy,’ in which he’d be awake — and ideally, shredding on his guitar — for a portion of the procedure.
“Having the patient awake and playing guitar while we take out the tumor allows us to be as aggressive as possible yet still maintain his quality of life and his manual dexterity,” Dr. Komotar, who heads the brain tumor program at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, told local news outlet WSVN-TV.
Initially, Nolen said the thought of rocking out with his cranium out “didn’t seem real,” yet he ultimately agreed.
“I’d only really heard of procedures of that nature being done in shows and movies,” he recalled to Fox News. “I felt like it was such a unique experience that I couldn’t pass up — especially with my motor skills being on the line.”
While Nolen was knocked out for the beginning and end of the surgery, he was awoken for a particularly crucial period of the two-hour procedure, where he proceeded to serenade the entire OR with songs by Deftones and System of a Down, an experience he recalled as being “out of this world.’
“To just wake up and have people actively working inside of your head is kind of an insane feeling,” he remembered, describing his later recovery as being “very amazing.”
Christian Nolen: The most badass Florida man story to ever exist.
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