“It all went very well,” neurosurgeon Roberto Trignani told the Italian news agency ANSA after the two-and-a-half-hour procedure in a hospital in Ancona on Tuesday.
The tumour was removed from her left temporal lobe, the area of the brain which controls language, as well as movements of the right side of the body.
Awake brain surgery, as it is known, is used to treat some neurological conditions such as tumours that affect the areas of the brain responsible for vision, movement or speech.
To help the surgeon try to inflict minimal damage on healthy tissue, the patient can be asked questions or engaged in an activity during the operation.
Trignani has performed some 60 operations over the last five years with patients conscious and engaged in other activities – which depend on their usual habits, as well as the part of the brain being operated on – including playing the violin or trumpet.
He said it was “a method that enables us to monitor the patient while we are intervening on brain functions and to calibrate our action”.
The woman quickly became a culinary hero in Italy, with many social media users expressing their admiration for her kitchen skills.
The olives, known as olive all’ascolana, are a speciality of the Marche region of central Italy and are particularly fiddly to make.
They consist of pitted green olives wrapped around balls of seasoned meat, and are coated in flour, egg and breadcrumbs before being fried.
