A few days after I started following Trent Horn’s YouTube channel, he and his wife, Laura, made a video telling the world she has a brain tumour. It’s the same tumour that I have — more or less — and they talked their fans through her diagnosis in their video. I have been waiting eagerly to hear how everything went, and another video popped up today.

I won’t keep you in suspense — the surgery went well — but there is a lot in the video that plucks at my heartstrings.

Laura is an absolute delight to listen to. She holds nothing back — sharing her darkest fears — but she finds a joke in every dark corner, and suddenly we are all laughing again. She is happier than you have ever seen someone who just had a cancer diagnosis.

In today’s video, they tell us about the months since Laura’s surgery, and how they have been so much harder than they expected.

Laura had lots of pain, of course, and couldn’t get around for a long time. But she lost her speech entirely, and it took weeks to come back. Her speech is still not quite right four months later.

It’s not quite on the same scale, but I lose my speech like this every time I have a seizure. I can’t speak at all at first, and it takes a while before I can get a word out. I can mostly speak after about half an hour, but I am never entirely back to normal, not even now.

The bit that really struck me, though, was how she dealt with everything.

Laura had it much harder than me, and there were times when she wished she hadn’t had surgery at all. My neurosurgeon wanted me to have surgery, and I said no. I wonder how things would have gone if I had had the surgery and Laura had skipped it.

Laura had a horrible time with depression, and there were times when she wished she was dead.

“I felt like I was in the tomb… I felt only darkness.”

But by the time she is telling this story, she is making jokes and laughing. Laura could get her darkest thoughts across with a laugh in her voice, and I am grateful for that.