Disease in a celebrity and celebrity status of the disease

摘要

The diagnosis of a brain disorder oftentimes lands a future-defining blow to a patient’s life with diverse implications from the social, psychological and economic perspectives. Multiple consultations and scrutiny of available treatment options ensue. Neurosurgery may have sounded a lot like the 'last resort' or 'poor prognosis' to the layperson. Still, Sharon Stone’s tale of neurosurgical triumph helped to steer the narrative towards improved care and technical competence. “If you act like you know what you’re going, you can do anything you want - except neurosurgery” were the words famously used by her to shower praise on the treating team.[1] The numerous advances in neurosurgical care continue to be documented in the ever-expanding ocean of scientific literature. The last five decades have witnessed significant developments in the management of many neurosurgical disorders. There is no dearth of scientific meetings to debate the treatment choices and their individual merits; the public, however, still holds a fairly black and white opinion of the consequences of developing a disease. To a person facing the reality of a serious neurosurgical condition, the story of how a man with clipped mirror aneurysms of the internal carotid arteries in 1988 went on to become the President of USA in 2021, educates and inspires in a way that a scientific publication simply cannot. A younger Mark Ruffalo, still early in his acting career in 2002, shared his experience of suffering from a vestibular schwannoma, with remarkable candor.[2] Grave as the consequences of postoperative facial palsy and deafness maybe for a career in acting, the world witnessed his excellent recovery and later professional growth. ‘The hulk’, incredibly enough, did not go for gamma ray radiosurgery. Recovering from a “brain tumor” and undergoing “brain surgery” may have been made just a tiny bit less daunting to the general public.