Surgeons Cut a Giant Tumor Out of My Head. Is There a Better Way?

For all the advances in medicine, brain surgery remains a surprisingly barbaric process. I got to learn this firsthand. In March 2023, just before my 40th birthday, I suffered a seizure while out jogging during a work trip to Nashville. Later, at the hospital, scans revealed a 4-centimeter-wide tumor in the back of my head. Within a few weeks, I was on an operating table at the University of Washington in Seattle as surgeons cut a long, upside-down “U” on my scalp, peeled back the skin, then made a grapefruit-size opening in my skull through which they could remove the mass. I lost a lot of blood and spent several weeks recuperating at home—but I was lucky. The location of my tumor made it operable, and a biopsy later showed it was benign.

In April, I recounted all this to Dr. Neal Kassell, a former co-chair of the University of Virginia’s neurosurgery department. At 78, Kassell has a slightly rumpled, professorial look. He’s been nearly blind in one eye since birth and speaks with the chutzpah of someone who spent decades cutting into people’s heads for a living. Looking over MRI scans of my tumor at his office in Charlottesville, he compared the procedure I went through to dipping into a cookie jar. The piece of bone that doctors removed to reach the troublesome area gets placed back, just like a lid.