Man plays Beatles song on guitar while undergoing brain surgery

A Brazilian bank worker has stunned doctors by playing The Beatles’s Yesterday on guitar while having brain surgery.

Anthony Kulkamp Dias, 33, was kept conscious during his operation to remove a tumour and played the British classic for the surgery team.

He also played Emanuel, a song he wrote for his newborn son, as well as Brazilian country songs.

“The doctors asked me to repeat one of the country songs so I even had an encore,” Mr Kulkamp told Brazilian news website G1.

Mr Kulkamp, who played guitar professionally for 20 years, discovered the tumour 15 days after his son was born a few months ago. He told local media he could not even say the name of his car and was stammering as a result.
Last week, he underwent surgery while conscious, and played a guitar balanced on his stomach.
“I played six songs at certain times,” he said. “My right hand was a bit weaker because that was the side that they were operating on. So I stopped and rested. I was interspersing songs and talking with them.”
The pioneering surgery allowed doctors to safely map the patient’s brain while awake to avoid injury that could compromise important brain functions.
“While it surprised everyone, the surgery was performed,” a spokesman from the Nossa Senhora da Conceição hospital in Santa Catarina said.
“Cerebral monitoring - important to prevent injuries that occur in the sensory, motor and speech areas - occurred during the procedure.”
^{Anthony, his wife Tamara and son Emanuel}
It was the 19th time the hospital had carried out such a procedure with cerebral monitoring.