Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Arterial Venous Malformation (AVM) and Cranial Aneursms

Just jumped right in and started telling everyone about my problems. Maybe I should include a full history and you will be able to understand better the depression and anxiety I have related to any procedures I have been having. So I will attempt to give some information about myself that will show the road and lead to a better picture.

Back in 1999 I was a healthy 23 year old working full time to support my wife and daughter and help put my wife through college. I was working 60 hours plus a week trying to keep us afloat. Well one night I got a migraine. I have had migraines before and didn't think much of it. Well it didn't go away, so I went to the local hospital to get a shot for it. Well they gave me the shot and an hour later I still had the headache so they gave me another one. When that didn't work they took me to CT. During the CT a large anomaly was found and they didn't really know what it was. They then began dumping all kinds of meds into me. I remember them saying I had a brain bleed and needed to be transferred to a larger facility. They said the couldn't get a helicopter in so they were going to transfer my by ambulance and bring in a trauma nurse to ride with me on the trip if something was to happen.

After making it to the larger hospital it was determine I had an Arterial Venous Malformation. That is wasn't bleeding, but could. The doctor that was assigned to me wanted to put me on a life flight jet and send me to Phoenix Arizona. I remember the doctor being rather rude and kept thumping me telling me to wake up, but couldn't for all the pain meds I was given. My wife finally told him she wanted another opinion and that pissed him off. Two more doctors came in and decided to forward my records to Arizona and see what they said. About a month later I went to Arizona and had a angiogram and showed a rather large AVM locating in the back left side of my brain. It was determined it was to large and to risky to remove it. It also had an aneurysm in it. They  decided my best options was an embolization using coils to close off the aneurysm. I had surgery a few days later to complete the embolization and have had no effects from it since.

Fast forward to 2008. I have a cyst on the side of my neck that I was going to have removed. They did a CT of it just to make sure there was no feelers off of it before they removed it. I went into the doctors for follow up before the surgery. At that time he told me that the cyst was fine to remove, but I had bigger problems than that. He told me that the CT found a large aneurysm in the Circle of Willis. He said that if it ruptured I would certainly not live to tell about it. I was then referred to a neurologist in a larger town. The neurologist advised that because of the location he could not do open surgery on it and referred me to another town to another hospital to have it coiled. I did have the surgery and had a follow up angiogram 1 year later. As of right now I am suppose to have another follow up angiogram because the last one revealed that some of the coils may have contracted and is still allowing blood flow in.

That is where we stand today. Until I get all this digestive problems figured out I have put the angiogram on hold. Like I have said I am a medical mystery. I have struggled for the last 20 years with different  types of problems, but nobody knows if they could be linked or anything else. My biggest fear at this point is I may have cancer and nobody has pinpointed it yet. I sure hope I don't as I watched my grandmother die from cancer a few years ago and it was not pretty. I don't want to suffer the way she did.

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