Supermodel Emily Sears revealed that she underwent brain surgery while awake after suffering “multiple seizures.”
“So, last Thursday, I had brain surgery!” the 35-year-old model captioned her post on Instagram, along with a photo of herself in a hospital bed at UCLA’s neurosurgery unit. The post was noted by Fox News in a piece published Tuesday. (SLIDESHOW: 142 Times Josephine Skriver Barely Wore Anything)
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The Australian model explained that the “past year of my life is so hard to put into words. In April last year, I suddenly woke up in an ambulance being taken to hospital after having a major seizure while shopping.” (SLIDESHOW: 142 Times Josephine Skriver Barely Wore Anything)
“After a few days of tests, I was diagnosed as having a cavernous malformation, otherwise known as a cavernoma, which is a cluster of abnormal blood vessels in the brain which cause epileptic seizures,” she added. (SLIDESHOW: 71 Times Samantha Hoopes Stripped Down)
Sears continued, while noting that her “whole life was put on hold from that point on from my work life to my social life, my relationship with my body and my identity.”
“This past year has been a rollercoaster of the up and downs of having multiple seizures, side effects of medication trials and the emotional toll of everything in my world changing so suddenly,” the model explained.
“I chose to have this surgery because my choices came down to living on medication for the rest of my life, always living with the likelihood of having breakthrough seizures even while medicated – or going ahead with the craniotomy surgery,” she added. “Because the cavernoma was located in the front left temporal lobe, I risked losing my ability to speak as that is the speech function area of the human brain.”
She also then explained due to the cavernoma’s location she had to have the surgery while awake, calling the experience “strange and surreal.”
“Because of this; I was awake while they operated as I needed to be able to speak to make sure they didn’t remove any vital tissue along with the blood vessels,” Sears explained.
“Ultimately, this experience has changed my world view more than I could ever express, and the overall feeling I am left with is gratitude,” she added. “I have a deepened respect for the human body, the human mind and the human soul. I am humbly grateful for the ability to access healthcare, for the fact that my condition had a cure and for the support of my friends, family, industry peers and for my incredible man who has stuck by me the whole time.”