Inventor and YouTuber Simone Giertz has revealed she has a brain tumour “the size of a golf ball”.
Giertz, who has just over a million followers, said in a video posted to her channel that the tumour is non-cancerous and benign.
“For about a year, I’ve had a swollen eyelid on my right eye. Some of you even commented on it, and I always thought it was just allergies,” she said.
“But these last couple of weeks, I started having some pain in my eye and in the eye socket.”
Her doctor sent her for an MRI scan, after which she found out she has a “pretty substantial brain tumour”.
The Swedish robotics enthusiast and Shorty Award nominee said she is to undergo “extensive brain surgery” at the end of this month and will be away for some time.
“Being faced with something like this really helps put a lot of things into perspective,” she said in the video which got more than a million views within 24 hours.
“Even though this last week has been really, really tough, and I’ve been very sad, what’s crazy is that I also feel so freakin’ lucky because I have this amazing family… all these really, really great friends and an amazing team.”
Giertz thanked her viewers for supporting her on her YouTube journey, which she says has been “the best three years of her life”.
The 27-year-old, whose channel fuses robotics with comedy, joined in March 2013 and has had more than 48 million views.
She has gained recognition online for her unusual inventions, including a machine which (unsuccessfully) pours and feeds cereal, and a wake-up machine featuring a rotating mannequin hand.
Giertz’s most popular video sees her locked inside her bathroom for 48 hours in a simulation of a spaceship.
She said: “This is not a goodbye, I’m planning on becoming super healthy and being able to keep on building shitty robots.”
