Gogglebox star Shaun Malone Jr has undergone brain surgery and shared a photo of his stitched-up head with followers. The 31-year-old armchair expert, who appears on Channel 4 from his parents' living room with mum Julie, dad Tom, and their dogs, posted an aerial image of his head with staples in a row.
On Thursday, Shaun revealed he was recovering in hospital after the procedure, captioning the post: 'Heatwave is a terrible time to be stuck in hospital until Friday. Brain surgery is deffo not the highlight of my year.'
Previous health battle
The reality star has previously spoken about battling a life-threatening infection as a teenager, which left him with brain damage. During that ordeal, he fell into a coma for weeks after suffering from brain swelling that started as sinusitis.
'In 2010, I got sinusitis and in some way, the infection found its way back to my brain,' he said in 2020 while opening up about the health scare. 'My brain started swelling and my skull started crushing it so my mum took me to A&E saying, "Look he's poorly!" and they said it was sinusitis.'
'And then I collapsed one day at home and I ended up going into a coma and they said to my mum and dad that I had a less than 10 per cent chance of living,' he added on the Coaching From The Sofa podcast.
Impact of brain damage
Speaking about how his brain damage affects his life, he continued: 'I was in a coma for a few weeks – and they said to my mum and dad "Shaun's got brain damage, we don't know what the brain damage is or how it'll affect him or if it's going to be really bad".'
'And when I woke up my brain damage affected me in some ways, like my memory but mostly the way it affected me was with my left side. I essentially had a stroke, I couldn't move my left arm, my left leg, even the left side of my face. My sister has got pictures of me trying to eat.'
Shaun described how joining the Manchester United Foundation to play disability football turned things around after the ordeal. He said: 'It had a huge impact on my mental health, I had gone from a very outgoing, young kid to then having all my independence taken away from me.'
