My four-week checkup was greeted by the aftermath of a good old fashioned Nor’easter snow storm. Thankfully, it was an overnight storm and the roads weren’t too bad, so the hour or so drive was uneventful.
We met first with Ellen, one of the nurse practitioners at the practice who I had met while in the hospital. I barely remember her, but I do. I may have been in bad shape when she stopped by. LOL She was great though and answered some of the physical questions I had about where things were placed as far as the bone flap that was removed and how things were effected by the incision. She said the incision itself looked great.
However, as she was describing things, she did a lot of poking and prodding on my head and it was uncomfortable. My head hasn’t been touched that much since the day of the surgery I think, so I certainly felt that later in the day.
Then we met with Dr. Ecker and he was pleased with how the surgery went and how the incision looked. There were no issues with the procedure and he indicated if he could script a general clipping procedure that was easy and basic, mine would have been it. The aneurysm presented in an easily accessible way for the clipping and he was able to position the clipping in an optimal position. Glad I was able to accommodate! 🙂
He was still stumped as to why I had such horrible back pain afterwards though. At this point, I don’t care about the cause because it’s gone, but it sure was awful while it was happening.
Unfortunately, he did not have the images downloaded of the procedure to show me. Dave and I were very disappointed with that. He did show me another patient’s scans of the hardware used to secure the bone fragment in place and the general size of the bone flap.
I was trying to find out the size and location of the where the bone was removed. Not sure I really got that direct answer, but that’s okay. It’s healing well. That’s all I really care about.
Dr. Ecker said he used a 6mm clip on the aneurysm so that would indicate the size of the aneurysm was around 4-5mm. He also used some different wording to describe what the aneurysm had morphed into at the time of the surgery. It went from the top of the annie being “thin and fragile” to him saying it had developed a “ratty looking tip” and that it most certainly would have ruptured. Again…I dodged a bullet and certainly hearing it said out loud almost brought me to tears. I have to thank Jenny and Mom for talking me into going ahead and proceeding with the scheduled surgery after the death of my sister Rhonda….it may have just saved my life. The fact it reshaped itself from my last scan in April proved it was active and probably going through another catalog season and another death in my family made it “ratty”. How could it not?
I’m reminded after both discussions with Ellen and Dr. Ecker that a LOT of muscle, tissues, nerves, and bone has to heal and it takes a lot of time to do so – not to mention the section of brain that needs to heal. There were also brackets attached to my head during the surgery to keep my head completely static still during the procedure and those screws created some of the small indents/bumps in my head that need to heal too. They caused some of the odd black and blue marks I had on my head immediately after the surgery.
So, the prognosis today is that I still need to take it easy and ease my way into more daily activities and work when I feel able to. I’m doing well and I’m VERY lucky. Thank you Dr. Ecker and Dr. Florman…and the hands of God.
So, if you have had one of these (graphic on left)…even 4 weeks after the procedure, don’t sleep on it yet!
Heidi's Brain Blog 