I had a Craniotomy to clip an unruptured aneurysm

General personal-stories
1

I am so new at this and sorry for the repeat. I posted in the wrong place earlier.

pchefdi
Brand new to this group and oh so thankful to have found it! It is been five weeks now since I had my craniotomy. I’m a 72-year-old female who was very healthy and very active previous to all this. Obviously my goal is to get back to my pre surgery lifestyle. It is worth mentioning that after the angiogram post surgery my neurologist told my husband that I had the arteries of a 20-year-old! Never smoked and don’t drink because I got migraines so badly. I know from all the reading I did that I was supposed to expect fatigue and major tiredness. I did not expect anything like this! At about week three I felt like I could do a little more each day so I started walking quite a lot around my house. I live in Minnesota so you know we have snow outside and it’s very cold. It was at that point that I started going out a little more with my husband still driving because I was still occasionally taking oxycodone. Somehow I got this terrible horrific cold that is going around the whole nation and it has just thrown me for a loop. I am coughing almost constantly and I’m exhausted most of the time. Now I don’t know if my fatigue and tiredness is from this cold or can I expect this from the actual surgery five weeks ago? I would really love to hear from anybody that had surgery for an unruptered aneurysm like I did and what to expect.

2

I guess your body is trying to do the best it can but cold virus is hard to beat when you are recovering from a major surgery.

I, too, had a craniotomy 6 months ago of my unruptured aneurysm. (11/17). I got sick (stomach flu) once during this time, avoided all sick people around me, avoided cold breeze, avoided anything that would bring down my body temperature. I even wore a thick hunter hat with ear coverings when I walk outside. In a way, bundle myself whenever my sensors tell me ‘cold’.

I heard that the recovery for unruptured and ruptured craniotomies are very different. I do not take any medicines except for Tylenol as needed. I have daily mild headaches which got worsen when the weather changed, on airplane rides, or traveling to high mountains.

Wish you the best of recovery. Most people in this forum are probably experiencing ruptured surgery (endo or clipping), the recovery might be dramatically different I guess?