Patient Sings ‘Moana’ Songs During Brain Surgery

Disney princesses, Disney stories, and Disney music have all helped people through difficult times in their lives on many occasions — but one woman’s recent experience with the Disney music from the Disney princess movie Moana (2016) really took the cake!

New Jersey native Krystina Vied recently went through a brain surgery that required her to be awake for the procedure. According to Newsweek, “she had a tumor removed in late June at the Hackensack Meridian Neuroscience Institute at Jersey Shore University Medical Center.”

Vied had been contending with seizures for 11 years, and was 21 when she was diagnosed with epilepsy.

Auras, Not Auroras

“I had my first seizure 11 years ago when I was 19,” Vied recalled in the interview with 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 explained. “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.”

Something similar reportedly happened to a Disney Guest during some Magic Kingdom fireworks; the Guest was disoriented after the seizure, but Cast Members managed to safely escort him out of the fireworks crowd without drawing attention to him.

According to Nitesh Patel (the co-director of neurosurgical oncology at the Hackensack Meridian Neuroscience Institute), the cause of Vied’s seizures was in fact a tumor, “right near her speech motor areas.”

Groundbreaking Brain Surgery Software

Patel explained in the interview that by “using Omniscient’s QuickTome platform,” it is possible 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.”

Due to the use of this software and the nature of the surgery, Vied was required to speak constantly during the brain surgery. Singing was suggested, and Vied inexplicably chose the songs from Moana!

“Singing helps capture a multitude of different speech components while making the testing an easier experience for the patient,” Patel clarified in the interview. “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.”

Moana Works Her Magic

“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,” Vied added.

“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,” she said.

The song “Sweet Caroline” was proffered as a suggestion, but Vied went with songs from the animated movie about a Polynesian princess instead.

“I honestly do not know what made me pick Moana,” Vied confessed. “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.”

Singing Moana songs was a huge help for Vied, who exclaimed later that she “was having a pretty good time during the surgery”! The doctors and nurses joined her in singing the songs, and Vied declared that she actually enjoyed her “little concert.” Vied was sent home for recovery just a day after surgery.

Here’s to Moana for helping the patient through this daunting brain surgery!