SURGEON EMPLOYS FIVE SECOND RULE AFTER DROPPING PIECE OF WOMAN'S SKULL DURING OPERATION

PEOPLE

 

Surgeon Drops Part of Woman’s Skull During Surgery, Puts It Back In: ‘Three-Second Rule’

By Cara Lynn Shultz  Published on March 27, 2025 01:05PM EDT

 

A surgeon dropped a fragment of a woman’s skull while she underwent surgery for terminal brain cancer — and joked about the “three second rule” — prompting her to nickname him “Dr. Butterfingers.”

 

Abi Feltham, 37, was nonchalant about the surgical mishap, which she said “does happen sometimes.” She shared the story on her social media platforms, where she documents her ongoing struggle with brain cancer.

 

In October 2023, three and a half years after she got sober, she began experiencing migraines. “I've never really had migraines  before,” Feltham shared on her YouTube channel. ”Apart from all of my addiction issues and the absolute hell I put my body through ….  I've I've been always been pretty fit and healthy.”

 

“I've always eaten really well apart from when I was smoking crack and I didn't eat at all,” she quipped.

 

Feltham shared that the migraines coincided with her giving up caffeine, explaining that when she got sober, “I turned into a coffee hound … I drank caffeine like I drank alcohol. That’s what happens when you have addiction issues.”

 

The migraines went away, and “2024 was going well” until the headaches returned in March “with a vengeance,” causing Feltham to wake up and vomit from the pain. Her eye doctor connected her with a neurology team, who diagnosed her with a brain tumor after a CT scan.

 

They told her, “ ‘It looks like a malignant tumor,’ and I was like, ‘You're a malignant tumor.’ Just kidding,” Feltham joked, saying that she was scheduled for brain surgery the following day, as she had a fluid-filled cyst that was pushing the tumor, which had “just been chilling” into her brain.

 

Surgery was successful, she shared, except for when the surgeon told her, “ 'One thing did happen,' and I was like, “Ooh that doesn't sound good.’ He said, ‘Look, this does happen sometimes, unfortunately, but during the operation I might have a little bit dropped your skull fragment on the  floor.’ “

 

“I was like, ‘You did what now?’ Luckily, my brain surgeon has quite a similar sense of humor to me, and he said, ‘Yeah dropped your skull on the floor but you know, three-second rule, so I picked it back up and gave it a wash.’ “

 

“From that moment onward, I nicknamed my neurosurgeon, Dr. Butterfingers — not to his face, only behind his back.”

 

However, Feltham's biopsy showed that the tumor was malignant — a rare type of tumor called oligodendroglioma — so she needed another surgery. “I was like, ‘Right let's do this Butterfingers, but don't you dare drop my skull on the floor again.”

 

The surgery was successful. Feltham said she “prepared myself to be to be told that I'd only have about five years left to live” after researching the survival rates for brain cancer. However, she was told she had 15 years, ‘So I was like, 'Oh, that's quite good, actually.' "

 

Feltham shared that, jokes aside, “It was really, really hard news to take because I wanted to live until I was really old” after “struggling with my mental health and not wanting to be alive at all. But I had gotten to a point where I did actually want to live. I was really happy in my life.”

 

“I want to be an old gray rude Grandma who just goes around talking weird,” she said. However,  “I just approached the whole thing with just acceptance. There's very little I can do to control this” other than stay healthy and continue to go to the doctor.

 

“I can just deal with it the best I can,” she said, “Stay positive, try and live a normal life as possible.”