Hello, gang. My follow-up appointment went well. The angio at Hopkins verifies that my left internal carotid annie does, indeed, have the ophthalmic artery growing out of it. Coiling is not ever going to be an option. Its largest dimension is 5 mm, not the 8.1 they measured at home.
The neurosurgeons all get together once a week and go over the radiology studies and they agree the risk of surgery is greater than the risk of rupture. They also agree it's not the cause of my eye pain. So does the neuro-ophthalmologist I saw there. He says since they would have to move the optic nerve out of the way to operate there is a 25% chance of some vision loss. He also says the headache pain may be due to a "migrainous process."
They recommend annual monitoring at home with MRI or CT angiograms. If it grows or changes shape, I will find a way to go back and have Dr. Huang fix it at Hopkins. She also recomended finding a headache center to see if they can help the eye pain. I will ask my transverse myelitis neurologist for a name of another doctor in her practice once I get caught up at work. Meanwhile I'm experimenting with self-accupressure. So far it just hurts.
I thought the angio was fascinating. This time I was fully awake, but not in any pain, so I felt all the heat and flushing, and saw all the lighting up of the blood vessels when they injected thte dye. Don't know if it was in my retinas or perceiving the ones actually in my brain, but interesting nonetheless. I also felt like someone was playing with my toes, so I guess the catheter was stimulating some weird nerve in my leg. Good times.