I have a 4mm annie that I have been watching since 5/2014 and it is very scary for me knowing that it is there. I also have AVM which we are going to do the Cyberknife on and will be starting that this Friday. In the mean time they will be able to see if my annie is growing and then I guess I will make a decision but right now clipping surgery scares the hell out of me! I hear alot of positive but also negative about surgery and as I have at least 5 years left to work it scares me that I won't be able to return as some folks have said it took them a couple years to bounce back. Good luck to all of us and hopefully we are making the right decisions.
my Wife collapsed from a ruptured Left temporal aneurism Dec 28 2014. She was decompressed with a drain and had a CT scan within 40 minutes from collapse. Ended up with a coiling on Dec 29 and maintained in a coma for 4 days. She was able to breath on her own by then so ETube was pulled. Doctors though that she would at least lose function of her right arm. Well after 2 weeks in ICU and then time in the neurosurgical care ward she has just been accepted into rehab. She is fully mobile, talks, knows all of us and seems to be getting better every day. She has trouble multitasking and handling complex tasks but that is improving too. She really does not want to stay in rehab because she feels she will improve more at home. Her short term memory is also improving. Her recovery is truly miraculous but to have her completely back may take more time and I would think that rehab would help in that regard. Truly though the greatest improvement I noticed was when she first started returning home for weekends. She slept better reestablished a normal routine and started recovering from that point on. In the hospital she was way more confused!
Well from the meeting with the interventional surgeon it appears that there is a second aneurism which needs a stent and a second contrast angiogram will determine if the first coiling will also require a stent, so we are not yet out of the woods per se.
Thanks to all for your replies to my discussion on "Updates". I'm going for a second opinion next month to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. At this time, I don't have any symptoms and I will only consider having surgery if it's the last resort. I was told by my neurosurgeon that the 3.5mm aneurysm can only be clipped due to its location.
I would like to hear from anyone who was watching and waiting but decided to treat their aneurysm and regretted the decision.
I also posted this discussion to the group - "Living With An Aneurysm". I was hoping that some of those who were members of this group when I joined in 2012, would have responded.
If it weren't for the BAF Support community, I think that I would have been suffering from depression. I used to feel so alone until I came across this website. What a relief it was to hear from other survivors of brain aneurysms. They gave me the hope and strength that I needed in my recovery.
I hope to someday be like Roger M. who says he's been watching and waiting for 19 years and he's in his late 70's.
May God Bless all of you in your recovery!