In 2001 I began having double vision. When I made an appointment with the eye doctor in January of 2002, she sent me for an MRI to rule out any possible problems that could have developed from my Arnold Chiari Brain surgery in 1997. Midway through the test, I was rolled out and injected with nuclear contrast (odd, I thought). After the test, I was shocked to see how many people had crowded into that tiny room where the scans are read, when there were only 3 to begin with. After the “all clear” to get dressed, I was physically escorted out of the hospital by the nurse (believe me, this was not my 1st rodeo, so I KNEW something was up). I’m on my way home and had just turned on Pitts School Road headed to my house when my cell phone rings. It’s 7:30pm, so it has to be my husband calling to see where I am, right? WRONG! It’s my eye doctor telling me to quote: “Do NOT pass Go, Do NOT collect $200, I am to GO IMMEDIATELY to Carolinas Medical Center where they have a bed waiting for me in the intensive care unit”. I thought she was joking and laughed,so I said “Ok, I knew something fishy was going on, what did they find?” she said"They found a GIANT BASILAR TIP ANEURYSM that is 8cmX9cm". Well, I almost wrecked the car when she told me that. I’m not a doctor, but I know that aneurysms aren’t good. I’m not even sure how I made it home. And as luck would have it, I was also my mother’s care giver and she wound up having to be admitted to the hospital the same night at a different hospital (my husband was very busy for a while).So, I’m in intensive care, and scheduled for an arteriorgram to see just HOW big this thing is and what the best approach is going to be to get at it. They tape my head to the table so I cant move, but the monitor is low enough that I can strain my eyes down low enough to see this monster - it covered the entire base of the back of my brain! This is NOT your typical bulge on one side of an artery or vessel: it looked like the whole vessel bulged! Then I’m sent back to ICU to lay on my back for 8 hours (not comfortable after having 4 back surgeries). This was the end of January. Surgery is scheduled for March 4, and the aneurysm had grown to 9cmx10cm. It was clipped in 3 places as close as Dr. VanderVeer could get to it, but due to the proximity, nerves,etc., a small piece remained. But, I did suffer a major stroke during the surgery. Dr. VanderVeer came out of the operating room and told my husband to go down to the chapel and start praying, that he had done everything he could, that I was in God’s hands now. My husband told him he’d been praying every second since he took me down to the operating room.
Fast forward to 2012. The remaing piece of aneurysm grew under the clipin the shape of a wine glass, so January 6,2012, Dr. Joe Bernard placed EZ Neuroform Microdelivery Stents in the shape of a Y in my artery to try preventing blood getting to the aneurysm and causing regrowth (my lifelong deathsentence). Now I have a new set of issues. I have had all of the symptoms you can possibly have; I have had all the LEAST LIKELY TO OCCUR ADVERSE symptoms you could have, and now I have developed a new set of symptoms that ARE NOT EVEN LISTED. I have had 40 seizures since January 6; I stutter, keep a constant headache, etc. My life has been a living hell since these stents were put in. I need to be in a research facility that can explain what is causing these seizures and give me back my quality of life.
396-DIARY.doc (74 KB)
hi Judith- so sorry to hear all your complications, our thoughts and prayers for you & yours