It has been almost 10 days since my brain surgery.

Even writing the phrase brain surgery feels strange now. A month ago, those two words sounded terrifying. Today, they feel like an oddly dramatic subplot in my life that somehow already happened.

Hospitals are strange little universes.

They compress fear, pain, hope, sleep deprivation, bad tea, random kindness, uncomfortable beds, emotional relatives, overworked nurses, and silent prayers into one building.

And in the middle of all this chaos exists one category of people who casually walk around discussing human brains like they are fixing WiFi routers.

Neurosurgeons.

Out of everyone involved in this journey — family, friends, nurses, hospital staff — one person quietly carried the heaviest responsibility: my neurosurgeon.

Today, I gifted him a pen.

Not because a pen is some extraordinary gift for someone who literally opened my skull and removed a tumor… but because I genuinely had no idea what else to give a person who gave me back my normal life.

Flowers felt temporary.
Sweets felt medically inappropriate.
And “thank you” felt criminally insufficient.

So… pen it was.

Honestly, when I first planned this surgery, I was extremely skeptical about the surgeon.

Because how exactly are you supposed to casually trust another human being with your brain?

That’s not a group project level of trust. That’s final-boss trust.

But the day I met him, something changed.

He was calm. Unshaken. Almost casually confident.

The kind of confidence that either comes from decades of experience… or from someone who has transcended fear completely.

Somehow, after meeting him, all my panic quietly packed its bags and left.

People around me were surprised at how calm I was about a brain tumor surgery.

Meanwhile, I was behaving like:

«“Yes yes, surgery is there next week… anyway what should we eat today?”»

But honestly, my calmness came from trust.

I had somehow fallen for the way he approached his work.

Not romantically, obviously.
This is not Grey’s Anatomy.

But there was something deeply reassuring about a person treating something so terrifying with such steadiness.

By surgery day, I had mentally divided responsibilities:

– The complicated part = surgeon’s department.
– Recovery pain and suffering = unfortunately my department.

Fair deal, honestly.

And somewhere, I also realized something important:
there is no escape from suffering.

Once you accept that pain will exist anyway, the mind strangely becomes quieter.

The surgery happened.

I survived.

Which, in hindsight, feels like a pretty solid achievement.

After the surgery, the doctor visited me and assured me everything had gone well.

The next day he came again, listened patiently to all my complaints, and patted my back saying:

«“You are fine.”»

Now medically speaking, those are very simple words.

But after brain surgery?
Those words sound like poetry.

A few days later, he noticed the pile of books near my hospital bed and asked:

«“Do you actually read all these books or are these just hospital decorations?”»

I immediately replied:

«“No doctor, I have a full library at home.”»

At that moment, I think both of us silently acknowledged that I was exactly the kind of patient who overthinks for sport.

Before discharge, we met again in the lift.

He smiled again and reassured me:

«“Everything will be fine.”»

And strangely, I believed him every single time.

Recovery at home started slowly.

First came discomfort.
Then tiny improvements.
Then slightly better days.

Healing is honestly very boring.

Movies make recovery look emotional and cinematic.

Real recovery is mostly:

– medicines
– careful walking
– awkward sleeping positions
– people telling you to “rest”
– and wondering whether your body has secretly filed complaints against you.

Finally, my 10-day follow-up consultation arrived.

And weirdly… I was looking forward to meeting my neurosurgeon again.

But this time, he was different.

Quiet. Professional. Distant.

He treated me like any other patient.

For a brief second, it almost broke my heart.

And then I realized:
that’s probably a good thing.

Because his job was never to become emotionally attached to my story.

His job was to save my life and move on to the next frightened human being waiting outside his cabin.

And he did his job beautifully.

Maybe I wanted the warmth of those hospital days to continue a little longer because surviving something difficult creates strange emotional attachments.

But healing also means accepting that some people are meant to guide you through one chapter, not stay for the entire book.

I handed him the pen, thanked him quietly, and walked away with a strange sense of closure.

The surgery I feared.
The pain I imagined.
The sleepless nights.
The uncertainty.

All of it had passed through his hands before passing through mine.

There are still a few weeks left before life becomes fully normal again.

But today, I finally feel ready to close this chapter.

The tumor is gone.

The fear is quieter.

And life, somehow, has given me another page to write on.