Incredible Video Shows Woman Singing 'Moana' During Brain Surgery

A patient described being awake for her brain surgery as "fun" after doctors asked her to sing through the procedure.

Krystina Vied, from Keansburg, New Jersey, put on a "little concert" for her doctors as she sang along to Disney's Moana during awake brain surgery. She had a tumor removed in late June at the Hackensack Meridian Neuroscience Institute at Jersey Shore University Medical Center. Vied, now 30, was diagnosed with epilepsy at 21 years old after experiencing multiple seizures.

"I had my first seizure 11 years ago when I was 19," Vied told Newsweek. "It began to affect my quality of life after I had my first public seizure. I was working the front desk at a clothing store when I went into a seizure behind the register.

"After that event, I suffered from major anxiety, nervous that I would have another seizure in public," Vied said. "It sounds silly, but having something like that happen in front of everyone is embarrassing. The past three years is when my life was truly affected by my seizures because I was getting my aura—pre-seizure symptom—more and more."

After seeing an epileptologist, Vied was sent for an MRI.

"She was found to have a tumor in her brain, right near her speech motor areas that was also found to be the source of her seizures," Nitesh Patel, co-director of neurosurgical oncology at the Hackensack Meridian Neuroscience Institute, told Newsweek. "The tumor's mass effect was pressing on the speech areas of her brain and triggering abnormal electrical impulses, leading to her seizures."

The location of this tumor was in what Patel described as "high-end real estate of the brain," meaning that any surgery would have to be carefully planned out.

"It's imperative for us to actively test the regions prior to resecting tissue," Patel said. "Using a preoperative MRI, we were able to generate an individualized neural network template of Krystina's speech connections. This was accomplished using Omniscient's QuickTome platform. We are one of only a few centers worldwide with the technology.

"The mapping allows neurosurgeons to visualize the portions of a patient's brain that make up their unique personality and develop a strategy to leave these portions of the brain intact, while performing brain surgery to remove tumors and other brain abnormalities," Patel added.

Normally with this software, a patient undergoing surgery in an area of the brain controlling speech is asked to speak in a conversational manner with the occasional speech exercise. But the doctors needed to see Vied's speech centers continuously, so Patel suggested trying something else.

"Singing helps capture a multitude of different speech components while making the testing an easier experience for the patient," Patel said. "Singing allows us to not only test the motor component of the patient's speech, but also the cadence, rhythm, pitch, and other subtle areas that may be missed on regular conversational speech testing."

When Vied found out about her surgery, she was "terrified." "I was definitely very nervous that I was going to be awake for the surgery, but very excited that Dr. Patel said that he wanted me to sing because I love singing," she said. "It actually gave me some sort of comfort to know he thought that was something I was going to be able to do while in surgery."

While Vied sang, her doctors were able to monitor her speech network to allow them to operate on the nearby tumor without impacting upon her ability to speak and sing.

"They originally wanted me to sing 'Sweet Caroline' but I didn't know the words, so they asked me what I would like to sing," Vied said. "I honestly do not know what made me pick Moana. I am a huge Disney fan. I love the movies and the songs. I am always playing Disney music in my classroom as a pre-K teacher, so I think my mind just thought of something I was listening to recently."

In the end, Vied was pleasantly surprised by the experience. "I was having a pretty good time during the surgery," she said. "I had all the nurses and doctors singing and encouraging me to sing. I know saying the surgery was fun seems strange, but it was. It was like I was throwing my own little concert for everyone.

"I also was very interested in what was going on. I asked them if they would show me my brain, and they did," Vied added. "That was cool, also just being able to see everything in the operating room. It was a very unique experience."

Less than 24 hours after the surgery, Vied was able to go home. "The recovery was a lot easier than I thought it would be," she said. "I was able to leave the hospital the day after the surgery. I did not have much pain, some itchiness around the wound, bruising around my eye and some side-effects from the steroid I was given to prevent brain swelling. I was ready to be out and about after the first week. My wife kept having to tell me to sit down and stop doing things because I was supposed to be resting.

"The next steps in my treatment will be chemotherapy and radiation to hopefully destroy the remaining bit of the tumor," Vied added.