Hi, I’m Canadian.
I live about an hour southeast of London Ontario and in January 2020 the neurosurgery team at University Hospital saved my life!
I had a very irregular shaped 7mm X 9mm X 12mm aneurysm in my right posterior communicating artery that ruptured and I immediately went into a coma. I had embolization coiling done and was on life support for 10 days.
I just recently found out (from my new family doctor) that there is (as of Jan 2020) another 2mm aneurysm at the neck of the aneurysm that ruptured. Apparently, an attempt was made to coil it at the same time that they were repairing the ruptured aneurysm.
I have so much anxiety now😞
I had my biannual (because I’m stable the neurosurgeon bumped me to 2 year interval checkup) MRA a month ago and will see my neurosurgeon on March 25th. I’ve got questions for him!
Hi, Charlene. I’m not Canadian, but I have a few friends who are. They are very dear to me and are very decent folks. 
I’ll bet that you have a few questions for your neurosurgeon on the 25th; I certainly would too. At the top of my list would be this one: if the neurosurgeon knew that there was another smaller aneurysm which was attached to the neck of the ruptured one and which they also tried to coil… why weren’t you informed of that at the time that the ruptured aneurysm was coiled? Had I been informed of that, I would’ve wanted to have more frequent testing to gauge the status of the smaller aneurysm.
Anxiety often comes from not knowing relevant pieces to a puzzle, and questions are a good vehicle to acquire those pieces. Make sure to jot your questions down in writing beforehand, and no question is a silly one.
I, personally, would either have a confidant with me to hear and register the doc’s responses. Or I would ask the doc if it was OK for me to record 'em.
If you feel comfortable sharing the results of your visit on the 25th with us, we would be honored. Thank you.
Thank you Peter.
I did have MRAs @ 6 months post discharge, @ one year and again one year later but then in 2022 the neurosurgeon said “you’re stable, I’ll see you in 2 years and you’ll have your next MRA then” …. Back in 2021 he’d told me that I’d have an MRA & see him every year for the rest of my life.
I will be writing down all of the questions I have for him for my March 25th visit as my memory is TERRIBLE.
Having a list of questions is always smart when we see a doctor. We learned to write them down in my phone and just hand it to my Neurosurgeon. If you write it on paper, make a copy so you can give one to the doctor and follow along with the other. Absolutely take someone with you so they can write the answers down and help form more questions. Make sure they can take good notes, BH can’t take a note to save a life. 
I’d ask if the neck was completely closed off from the artery and blood wasn’t able to get to the smaller aneurysm. My guess is that’s what happened, but it’s just an uneducated guess. It took me three procedures to get to the one year point for an MRI, every time she repaired it, my two year count had to start over. When we rupture, making it to the two year mark is reason to have a big celebration! I had to have a fourth procedure to get to the “see you in five years” mark but they changed it to every three years because of my pituitary adenoma and a small amount of blood seen at the neck of my aneurysm. I can certainly live with an MRI/A every three years.
Fingers crossed for good results and answers to your questions. Remember not to shake your head in agreement if you don’t understand tell the doctor to “dumb it down” for you. Most of us don’t know medical jargon as we didn’t learn it in school, unless of course you’re a RN or higher. When we nod our head as if we understand, the doctor thinks we do. Trust me, there is no class for mind reading 101 at any university.
Please let us know what your told and if you need any help with what questions to ask, we are here for you!
Well, I met with my neurosurgeon yesterday.
He answered all of my questions.
He called my little aneurysm a lobe (used another term but I can’t remember what he called it) of the very large aneurysm that ruptured. The lobe is about 3mm X 2mm now. It has remained fairly stable in size over 4 years and he is confident that zero intervention is necessary at this time.
He wants to do an angiogram next year.
He said this lobe is in a very dangerous place at the intersection of 4 arteries (can’t remember all of them but two are the carotid and posterior communicating). He doesn’t want to intervene until (if) it reaches closer to 4mm as he doesn’t want to do more harm than good.
I’ll have another MRA and see him in a year.
I also asked him what grade of subarachnoid hemorrhage I had in 2020. He did his grading right then and there with me, “grade 6, so since the scale only goes to grade 5, grade 5”.
I do feel a lot less (or more?) anxiety now that I’ve got answers.
Having a retired doc in my family, I was always encouraged to find surgeons who were “not overly eager to cut”. Looks like you found one. Great news and thank you for sharing it with us.
Glad he was able to answer all your questions! I’ve only heard the little ones called daughter sacs as it’s what my Neurosurgeon called them. She quit counting at 24, I don’t think anyone went back to my imaging to count the rest or if that would have been possible. It probably is but why bother, except my own morbid curiosity.
Here’s a diagram of the brain arteries.
Here’s the common diagram of the Circle of Willis
There’s a lot of grading scales out there but I think the most common ones are the Glasgow Coma Scale, Hunt and Hess, as well as the Fisher Scale. My guess is he used the Hunt and Hess as it goes to five. I only know my Fisher Scale (3j but here’s an older article on them as well as a few others. http://cmp-manual.wbs.cz/skaly/subarachnoid_hemorrhage_grading_scales.pdf
I’m watching a show on PBS Masterpiece that’s in Italian I think (I have to read the subtitles). In it, one of the characters passed out and was taken to hospital in a rural area by the main character. A doctor told him she has a cerebral aneurysm that had to be operated on immediately. When she wakes up the main character tells her she has something on her brain like a bulge. She shares she’s been aware of this for six months and it’s inoperable. At the end of the episode, she writes something like we can’t control when or where we die, but we can control how we live now. Personally, I like that theory and try to live by it one day at a time.