Simone Giertz, a popular YouTuber with nearly 1 million subscribers who specializes in building robots, said in a video Monday that she has been diagnosed with a substantial brain tumor that will require surgery.
In the video, she said she has had a swollen right eyelid for about a year. After feeling pain in her eye recently, she had an MRI scan last week — which revealed a tumor about the size of a golf ball. “I don’t even like golf, but I do like my brain, a lot,” she said in the video, with her trademark deadpan humor.
Giertz said she will need to undergo extensive brain surgery, which is scheduled for the end of May. “The good news is that I’m probably not dying,” she said. According to Giertz, the tumor appears benign but said that her full prognosis won’t be known until after her operation. She plans to post updates on Twitter and Instagram about her status.
“This is not a goodbye,” she said. “I’m planning on becoming super-healthy, and being able to keep on building shitty robots and making videos for you.” Giertz, who got emotional in the video, also expressed gratitude for the support of her fans, as well as her family, friends and business team.
The 27-year-old’s YouTube bio says she’s “Swedish but sound[s] American just to confuse you.” She currently has 982,000 subscribers to her channel on YouTube, which she joined in March 2013. In her most popular video, with 7.5 million views to date, she documents spending 48 hours locked in her bathroom to prove she could endure a mission to space; the video was sponsored by Google’s Making & Science Initiative.
According to her LinkedIn bio, Giertz briefly attended Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, where she studied physics, and worked as an editor at the Swedish Institute.
Watch the full video below, or at this link:
