In addition to being on TV, Alderney man Peter Chaisit-Charles was fully awake during the removal of a brain tumour last week. (Picture courtesy of Channel 4, 0783029)

ALDERNEY man Peter Chaisit-Charles, who underwent brain surgery live on TV, is recovering well.

Mr Chaisit-Charles, 52, was last week featured on Channel 4’s Surgery Live. He was kept awake during the procedure, which was filmed in front of a studio audience.

When asked what he remembered about the operation, Mr Chaisit-Charles said: ‘I remember an awful lot. I remember counting and doing the alphabet and it’s really quite refreshing to remember it all. I can remember the questions coming across and realising that I was actually awake when it was all happening.

‘I was comfortable from the beginning right through to the end – even the staples being put in did not hurt at all.’

Mr Chaisit-Charles’s condition led to him suffering epilepsy for the past four years, with a lesion causing abnormal electrical activity in the brain. It had also begun to affect his short-term memory.

The tumour was growing in the left temporal lobe, the area of the brain that controls speech and language. If it had continued to grow, Mr Chaisit-Charles could have lost some of that ability.

Neurosurgeon Paul Grundy operated on Mr Chaisit-Charles at Southampton General Hospital. He used a drill to remove a small piece of Mr Chaisit-Charles’s skull before applying small electric currents to parts of his brain in an effort to remove the suspected tumour. At the same time, he asked Mr Chaisit-Charles to count aloud. When the current caused the patient to stop counting, it meant Mr Grundy was hitting live brain tissue. When Mr Chaisit-Charles’s speech was unaffected, Mr Grundy knew he was touching the lesion.