I turned 62-years old on December 22nd. How did I celebrate? Well, we had a fantastic dinner in Portland, then I had an MRA next door in Scarborough. Not how everyone would want to celebrate, but it is what it is. That just happened to be the time and date they had available for the MRA, so I took it.

I wasn’t nervous regarding the MRA itself, other than remaining still during the painless, but noisy procedure, it’s always the impending results where the scanxiety comes in to play.

Usually there is a period of waiting before finding out the results, but in this case, the results were posted to the hospital’s online portal the following morning. I wasn’t expecting to see them so soon. There was good news, and potentially some bad news.

The good news is that no new brain aneurysms were detected. That IS good news because with two previous aneurysms, I am already susceptible to develop more.

The bad news may NOT be bad news, but I don’t know that yet. The wording in the report said there is “a 4 mm focus of flow related enhancement” somewhere along the coiled aneurysm. When the doctor’s office called the next day, they said Dr. Ecker said he couldn’t tell if that finding was “real or not” and it appeared he was leaning towards my having a cerebral angiogram to confirm or deny that finding.

What IS discerning about the 4 mm area of focus is that after my last scan in 2022, the older remnant area of concern where blood was getting back into the neck of my coiled aneurysm, was almost completely gone. So, this is a NEW area of concern. And if it is truly a new out-pouching of blood along the aneurysm, it certainly developed quickly.

We’re hoping to speak to the doctor via TeleHealth, so we don’t have to drive 60 miles just to spend 15 minutes with him, but we DO want to see the images and discuss it with him. I’m hoping that conversation happens sooner rather than later and an angiogram can be scheduled fairly quickly. I want to know if this is “real or not”. If it’s just a blip on the MRA scan, then great, nothing to worry about. If it IS a new remnant, the next course of action could be very complicated as there are already 20 coils and two stents trying to stop this bugger from killing me.

I will update you all when I know more. I’m trying not to be overly reactive, but it certainly is concerning news…until I learn it’s NOT concerning news. Happy birthday to me!

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I shared my story (up to this point) on the MaineBA.org website if you’re new to my blog and would like the condensed version of my story.