How I Found Out - Pt II

So in October last year I went to see my endocrinologist at 6pm 2 days after my CT Scan and she pretty much laid out that I had an aneurysm and that she had already set up an appoint in a few days with a neurosurgeon, someone she has sent patients to many times for pituitary removal. Off I went. He looked at the CT Scan and said that I would need to undergo an angiogram in November, he felt like I had an AVM that could be treated by gamma knife surgery, where they screw a mask on your face, bolt that to a table and then beam a laser at your head, or I could have some angio surgery like coiling, where they go in the femural artery, and put something in the blood vessels in your brain. And I thought that was not great, but doable.  He is the medical director of a local hospital's neurosurgery group, so I thought he was very skilled, but then I found out the truth.


I had to wait a month to see him, and when I went to my appointment, I waited for 1 and half hours. And not one person who was there felt they need to say anything. Pete was not able to come because both of our children were home sick. But I thought, no big deal, he's going to say what he told Pete right after the angio. 


He came in the room, sat down, popped open the xray machine and showed me my brain, and then said, "You have an aneurysm and over here, this thing that we thought was an AVM, we don't know what it is, we've never seen it, and we'd like to send it to a neurosurgeon, Dr. Spaetzler, who has done thousands of open brain surgery, because they might know what it is, and how to deal with it. We can't do the simple surgeries, I can send you to my partner to clip the aneurysm, he does the open brain surgery. But let's wait and see what this doctor says.


I waited 9 weeks and called ever week and never got an answer. Thank the universe for my mom, she's really into medical stuff, has a love affair with the medical field. So she took it upon herself to go to Oregon Heath and Science University (OHSU) and inquire at the Neurosurgeons office. I called them, got in 4 days later to have a consultation with the director, was told that I needed to have surgery and she the guy who specialize in complicated projects, and he saw us 4 days later. That was March 5th. He and his crew, nicknamed Skull Base, were amazing with us, and they made the appointment to clip it in 10 days, so I could get through this and get on with my life. He also had talked to Dr. Spaetzler already about me, they were good friends and apparently I was the talk of the neurosurgery world, but hadn't a clue about that. 


The night before my surgery I received a letter from the first doctors office, it was a copy of a faxed letter from Dr. Spaetzler, and he said that I had Moyamoya and he would recommend a bypass when they went in to clip the aneurysm. When we saw Dr. Delashaw, my surgeon, he came into the pre-op room and we told him what Dr. Spaetzler said and he said, "Yep, that's what the diagnoises is, it's Moyamoya, but if your brain vessels are functioning, we won't do the bypass. They went in and they found 4 anneurysms, the angios that were done only showed one, but under it were some buddies. And they decided not to do bypass. 


I was out and 4 hours later I woke up, and I had the worst headache in my life, it was like a cartoon when someone gets hit with a big mallet or an anvil. But after 3 days in the hospital I was able to walk around very well and so they sent me home.