With a pineal operation, unlike other brain tumours, you do not need to cut through the brain to reach the tumour; instead, once you have opened the meninges, the membrane beneath the skull that covers the brain and spinal cord, you are looking along a narrow crevice that separates the upper part of the brain, the cerebral hemispheres, from the lower part – the brainstem and cerebellum. You feel as though you are crawling along a long tunnel. At about three inches’ depth – although it feels a hundred times longer because of the microscope’s magnification – you will find the tumour.
