Courtney Elizabeth Warner usually posts flawless makeup tutorials and gorgeous hair how-tos to her YouTube channel, but lately many of her videos have been more serious.
Two months ago, Warner posted a video telling her more than 135,000 subscribers that she has a brain tumour. She wanted to let her followers know because she had stage three brain cancer, would have to get surgery to remove the tumour, and would be absent from her channel for treatment.
She's been candid about her treatment on her channel since, so much so that she asked for her awake brain surgery to be filmed so that she could share it with her followers. The video went up on her channel on June 28, and has been viewed more than 200,000 times as of writing.
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If you're squeamish, don't worry — you don't ever actually see her brain. Some parts of the surgery are filmed up close to her face, so you can see how she's feeling (and the moment when she had a seizure) and some parts are filmed from her perspective, so you can see what she was seeing.
Warner's tumour was invading the part of her brain that controls speech, she said in an earlier video, which sometimes causes her to forget what things are called or to struggle saying some words. (There's a moment early in the video of her surgery when she celebrates being able to say the word "perspective.")
People who have been following her story celebrated that moment, too, and have noticed that her speech has gotten better.
"Your speech is improving so much with every video you post! I'm so amazed at your progress.... just know that we are all pulling for you and wish you a very quick recovery," Camille Eppstein wrote in the comments on Warner's video.
"When you said perspective I was like 'woah girl you just said perspective!' then you praised yourself. Love it," someone named Shannon wrote.
Although she shared the video recently, Warner says that her operation happened more than a month ago and the doctors were able to remove 95% of the tumour.
Soon after her surgery, Warner didn't want anything to do with the video. She didn't want to watch it and even considered deleting it, but decided to watch it again three days before posting and said she's so glad that she didn't. Although she knows not everyone will think the video is cool, she finds it fascinating.
For now, she'll keep sharing updates about her recovery and just yesterday shared another emotional video simply titled "Cancer Sucks" talking about radiation and dealing with losing her hair.
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