Swiftie Mom Sings Along to Taylor Swift During Awake Brain Surgery to Preserve Her Speech

A Taylor Swift fan put on her own Eras Tour stop in the operating room.

A 36-year-old mother named Selena Campione recently underwent awake craniotomy to remove a brain tumor at Hackensack Meridian Neuroscience Institute at Jersey Shore University Medical Center, where Dr. Nitesh Patel preserved her speech during the operation through the use of a technology called Quicktome Connectomics, which allowed the doctor to monitor Campione’s speech and other sectors of her brain to ensure he wasn’t interfering with them while removing the tumor.

Dr. Patel noted to Campione that singing is the best option for the method. “Singing allows me to continuously monitor a patient’s speech, cadence, and rhythm without interruptions and pauses that happen during a conversation,” Patel said in a press release.

As a result, Campione decided that her singing of choice would be Swift’s catalogue. “My two daughters are huge Taylor Swift fans, and so am I. I hear her music 24 hours a day, in my car, in my house. I could sing with her on stage, if she wanted me to,” she shared. “So it just made sense to sing it during surgery. It helped me, I felt like my daughters were with me.”

According to Campione, during the operation, she sang tracks ranging from “22” and “Shake It Off” to “Style,” and she added that the surgery was enjoyable.  “The nurses told me you are going to have fun in the operating room with Dr. Patel. I was like really?” she recalled. “It was fantastic. I didn’t feel anything. The nurses were holding my hand, walking me through everything and singing along with me. I even think I’ve turned the doctors into Swifties. You see them in one of the videos tapping along to the beat with their tools.” 

Campione is now a few months post-surgery and symptom free. “My daughters were with me the whole surgery. Knowing they would be singing right along with me, got me through the surgery,” she concluded. “Now my younger daughter tells her teacher, Taylor Swift was in the operating room singing with me.”