Neurosurgery

Barry is an author, syndicated humorist, and longtime professional speaker who's worked nearly 100 jobs, lived on the beach, and that's literally on the beach, and entertained audiences around the world.

After being diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor in his 70s and undergoing brain surgery, Barry returned to fiction and began writing slightly off-kilter, proving that sometimes a major life disruption can point us toward something we still have left to do.

Today we're talking about second acts, unfinished dreams, and why being ready to retire from one thing doesn't mean we're finished with everything.

Stay tuned for a delicious conversation.

So it's not a story worth telling, a story people would really love.

And it's turned out to be that way, which is great because, you know, it took me two years to put it together because I really didn't know what I was doing.

And did you lose any memory? Did you lose any vocabulary from the brain surgery? What were you up against afterwards?

Well, as you can see, I'm not quite as fluid verbally as I used to be when I'm speaking.

She's brave in so many other ways too.

She's been fighting stage four cancer, brain surgery, radiation, immunotherapy, and somehow cancer.

Through it all, she's still Teddy.

Today, we're going to talk about where her health really stands now, the fear of cancer coming back, and dating after everything that she's gone through.

So already like things weren't comprehending the way that I wasn't able to comprehend standard things.

Got it.

So I didn't even think it was, I mean, I had surgery that brain surgery the next day.

I didn't even know.

So you get to choose, right? You get to choose.

Do I harm my brain? Do I keep myself stuck? Do I stay the way I am? Do I get worse over time? Or am I going to do something to fight back? And that's why I came up with the idea of self-brain surgery.

It's like do something positive for your patient who's also you, right?

Yeah.

And that sounds awful, you know, like I can stress my grandkids out for stuff they didn't even go through.

But the interesting thing is it's been shown that if those people get the right kind of help and they learn how to process it and they get themselves squared away, their kids can be flipped back to a normal cortisol state in the first generation and their children's children will be born with a normal stress response.

And so that means you can fix it in one generation if you're willing to get after it and do that sort of self-brain surgery work.

And so it's just this multiple different ways that the decisions, choices, and behaviors, attitudes, and thought processes that we have affect other people directly.

Ah, yeah.

You had to have brain surgery and your husband is worrying about harvesting blueberries.

Like this is chaos, my friend.

Yeah, it wasn't a fun time.

So that went in to remove the pressure in the fluid while they tried to work out what was going on because the diagnosis was really elusive.

And unfortunately, over the next week, I just got sicker and sicker.

So they took me for explorative brain surgery, which is not something that anyone ever wants to hear.

Your surgeons are telling you, we're just going to go in for a look.

Thank you.

Jo actually just went through brain surgery to have a tumor removed.

I know.

I heard all that.

And then, you know, I got a Prenovo scan and-

Yeah

... and it was like, I gotta have brain surgery pretty, pretty urgently.

And then, and then, yeah.

I'm sorry, I don't remember your name.

You're having brain surgery.

Sweet sister, I just want to lift you up to God's throne of grace and mercy.

Father God, we just ask for your guidance, your wisdom, Father, your peace, your discernment in the hands of the surgeon, Father.

From Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, this is Your Brain with Dr. Phil Stieg.

Internationally renowned scientist and educator, Dr. Stieg is Professor of Neurological Surgery at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center.

This week, Dr. Stieg and his guest explore the power of positivity.

We have all been told at one point or another to think positively, but how can optimism and happiness truly transform our lives? My guest today, Dr.

Anyway, felt rude to me.

Like, if I have to go through brain surgery, there's some

benefit.

Yeah.

And he goes, okay, this all makes a lot more sense now with the questions I'm asking.

But he was recommending the next day, my husband have surgery to remove this mass or cyst, whatever it was, which having seen many, many patients who either had brain surgery or where they needed brain surgery, i thought i would be prepared for something like that but it's a totally different experience when it's a person you personally care for love and you just like think worst case scenario everything so i ended up leaving him at the hospital going home to be with my son that night he was like first surgery in the morning the next day I'm sitting in the waiting room, like panicked, like so worried about what's going on.

And I was told it'll be like a four to six hour surgery.

And at about three hours, I get a thing from the like hospital buzzer system.