Surgeons find it helpful not to touch parts of the brain responsible for fine motor skills. A 60-year-old Italian woman managed to prepare about 90 green olives for frying while undergoing surgery to remove a tumor from the left temporal lobe of her brain. Modern medicine allows such operations to be performed without anesthesia using ultrasound.
Since different areas of the brain are responsible for motor functions, speech, vision, and memory, it is extremely important not to damage healthy tissue. This is why doctors ask the semirecumbent patient not to switch off but to respond to external stimuli and do something.
Patient played violin during brain surgery. “This allows us to monitor the patient’s condition while we work on his brain functions, so we know exactly what we are doing,” neurosurgeon Roberto Trignani told the ANSA agency. Some of the sick people just talk to doctors, others watch cartoons, someone plays the violin or guitar. So far, no one has been involved in the culinary side of the operation.
Preparing olives Ascolane-style is a complicated process. The patient spent about an hour doing it, and during that time, as Italian media reported, “the operating room turned into something resembling a kitchen.” The entire procedure took about two and a half hours, went smoothly, and ended successfully. Surgeon Roberto Trignani, leading a team of 11 doctors and nurses, has performed about 60 such surgeries at the “Riunite” hospital in Ancona in recent years. The left temporal lobe of the brain is responsible for language, memory, and movement on the right side of the body.
Ascolana olives have long been a popular local snack in the Marche region on the Adriatic coast of central Italy. Green olives are pitted, stuffed with meat, coated with egg white, sprinkled with flour and breadcrumbs, and fried.