One interesting anecdote from my time at Mass General for brain surgery. My surgeon was a wonderfully patient man, and answered all my questions seriously, but not without some humor.

So one of the last of my list of questions before surgery was,
"I know you are going to cut a 1-inch square hole in my skull to get to the tumor. Once that heals, will it be good as new? Or will it be like a rowboat - you know, once patched, it's never quite the same? Could I, for example, go scuba diving safely even with the added pressure, or would it be apt to "give"?"

Dr. Ojemann very seriously said, "No, your skull is not like a rowboat. Once it heals completely, it should handle pressure as well as it ever did. But you should never scuba dive alone anyway. Because you will no longer have the balance of a normal person, you will be relying on visual clues more than before. And under water, without those "clues," you will not know which way is "up," so it is not safe for you to go without someone else who will just naturally "know" that."

Pretty interesting, huh? I have never scuba dived, but it is good to know, just in case!