my elderly mother living abroad is getting a neurosurgical operation and I can't figure out why

Hi,

I know this might seem a bit weird but my mom who is 81 and lives abroad just informed me that she is getting neurosurgery, an operation in her head or brain to correct something in her nervous system as she does not walk properly.

I am not really sure what happened in recent weeks or when this came up but I had noticed there was something going on recently with the online communications, as I noticed she was not logging in at the same times.

I do not speak with anyone in my family directly except for my parents, their caregiver is a foreigner who does not speak the other language my family speaks well, she does not know how to write, I have her on social media, but as I mentioned I do not communicate with anyone else as I am so far away and I do not speak to my other family members, this has been going on for years.

Does anyone know what this operation is? My mother was not able to tell me about it, and given her condition, I do not think she is in the position to speak to me about it, she might also feel a bit nervous about having to go through it. 

She does have a history of falls and only recently we were able to have her get a CT scan when I was there visiting them. Maybe they found something in the CT scan. It's hard to know as it's hard to get appropriate information

As long as she has agreed to do the surgery, I don't know if there is a point in trying to contact my relatives whom I haven't spoken with in a while

Does anyone here know anything about this