For the obvious reasons, I’m extremely thankful at this year’s Thanksgiving.
I’m thankful for:
✤ Surviving my ruptured brain aneurysm.
✤ That God guides the hands of my neuroradiologist during
surgery.
✤ My employer and co-workers for showing their support.
✤ My family’s love and constant support.
✤ Dave, for being by my side every day of my 20-day hospital stay, as well as putting up with me at home 24/7!
How about you?
This morning, I met with Dr. Kwan, who is actually a neuroradiologist, rather than a neurologist which I have been my mistakingly calling him. He’s a specialist basically, who does coiling.
He had seen my shots from the MRI and MRA from last Tuesday and said things looked very good. I wasn’t even able to find the aneurysm on the MRA images because it had clotted so well, but I sure could on the one MRA image he showed me from the day it happened! WOW! I had no idea it was that large. Very scary especially when I saw how close it was to my left eye and he made a size correction that it was a 11 mm annie, rather than 10 mm. That’s almost a half an inch.
Again, it was located in my left internal carotid artery behind my left eye.
He showed me images taken throughout the surgery where each coil was inserted. Really fascinating stuff. Dr. Kwan was also able to squelch any fears I may have had by answering a lot of questions I’m sure he didn’t have the time to answer, but I’m grateful he at least made the effort.
One of the main questions I had, was how did he get to the LEFT side of my brain from the RIGHT side of my groin.mDr. Kwan begrudgingly drew a diagram…but I found this one as well. Makes sense.
He said the headaches I’m experiencing were still probably being caused by blood reabsorbing into my system and it could go on for months until it completely lets up.
Dr. Kwan said that only something more catastrophic happening would be a signal of a problem with the coiling. So, when I sneeze and it hurts…don’t worry! It may happen for some time yet.
He said to use common sense with getting back into things like housework, driving and work. I need to pace myself and ease my way into it. He said it’s not uncommon for most people to be off work for three months. I’m hoping to get back to work, at least part time from home soon. We’ll see.
Keeping my blood pressure normal is also important as the higher it gets the more the blood is pumped through those
arteries and can cause stress.
Dr. Kwan did NOT recommended any serious neck manipulation, so I’m not sure how that will come in to play with the OMT therapy I’ve been having monthly.
He DID say a beer or glass of wine now and then won’t hurt me, nor will a cup of strong tea or a pot of tea…so that’s good! And he said getting a massage would be good, but with not a lot of neck manipulation.
Overall, I was very pleased with the visit. I still have concerns with other parts of my head, like sinus and migraines, but he basically directed me to go to a neurologist, which I think I will with the help of my regular PCP.
Yesterday was a rough day. I did far too much the last two days with the trip down for the MRI/MRA and then two visits and the store on Wednesday. I felt horrible Wednesday night and almost all of yesterday with bad headaches, VERY tired and some other lingering effects that I was told the Vicadin may be causing.
My nurse visited yesterday and she may have shed some light on a couple of things. Apparently some of the symptoms I have displayed the last couple of days with the double vision, confused vision, headaches and nausea, may simply be caused by 20 days in the hospital and two weeks as home!
She said it’s quite common for folks who haven’t had a lot of stimulation outside the hospital or home to experience exactly what I did. Even the hair loss. Obviuosly, I’m not washing my hair on a daily basis just yet because it really poops me out, so there will be an accumulative effect on the days I DO wash my hair. Makes far more sense.
I will still ask my Dr. on Tuesday about all of these things and hopefully he can tell me what I should and shouldn’t expect and what is and isn’t related to the surgery, so I won’t freak
out…which I am KIND OF doing until I know better.
I feel better today and hope to get out for some fresh air later as Dave said he’ll let me boss him around in the garden to button it up the for winter. I hope we’re still speaking to one another when we get back in house! LOL
Also, the occupational therapist came yesterday and she gave me some other good advice for everyday-living type of things for therapy.
A lot of people, including all the folks from Health Reach and on the message board, say that with this kind of situation, depression is not uncommon. Great! Just what I need for the
holidays! Hopefully, with the help of my fantastic psychologist, I can avoid that trap.
When I was finally able to get up and move around in the hospital, Dave let me use his laptop out in the waiting room
during our walks and we discovered a great message board devoted to people who have suffered from ruptured or un-ruptured aneurysms. They call them “annies”.
The Brain Talk Community has helped me realize many people have aneurysms and many people survive them and many people have worse situations than I find myself in and are doing very well. It’s a great source of comfort as well.
I have several posts on the board. I’m no expert and I can only base things on my current situation, but it’s extremely useful to find a group of folks from all over the world, not just the U.S., who know what I’m going through and have been there, done that.
Several people on the board had their aneurysms coiled by Dr. Kwan at Maine Med too, so there’s a small fan club of Dr. Kwan there.
