exciting few days
First, the back story. I had been suffering from Sinusitis since the middle of December. I had taken 2 courses of antibiotics for it, and prednisone, but it wouldn’t go away. SO, Tuesday I had a CT scan of my sinuses. THursday night (1/11/07) I talked to my GP, and he told me that my sinuses looked pretty good, butt that the scan showed an abnormality on my right frontal lobe, he also otld me a sinus ct scan didn’t really cover that area proprely, so it was likely an artifact, but a full head ct scan was called for. SO, th next day (1/12/07!) i went back in and had the head ct scan. After the scan i get called back up to his office, and he shows me it.. there is something obviously wrong in my brain. At the time he called it a tumor. Ugh, i felt really scared. He referred me immediately to the neurosurgery department (This is at an all-in-one non profit medical center, THe PAlo ALto Medical Foundation. SO I mope up to the neurology.neurosurgery dept, and sit and wait to be seen…. amidst a bunch of old people. FInally I get called back, and we look ove the scan again. And he calls it a clot. and tells me I neeed to get more tests (MRI and MRA) done ASAP. ASAP ends up being yesterday 1/15/2007)at 6:45 am. The GP gave me a scrip for valium to keep me from going nutso over the weeekend. So I went and got the tests done a the crack of dawn on monday… I also had a followup with the neurosugeon today at 4:15pm. Today was hard to deal with, since i couldn’t use any of my benzos, as I had to drive.
Well, I went in, and was told the following;
There is a definite hemorrhage in your brain, that has bled multiple times (Based on some email I’m pretty sure 12/13/2006 was one such time, as I had a terrible headache that kept me awake that night which required vicodin for me to sleep. He also said there was no indication of a tumor on the MRI with contrast. So, the MRA test is a study of hte brain’s blood vessels. He said that what he saw looked ok, but he believes there is a malformation at the heart of hte hemmorage, which is too small to seen by that test, since the big (4cm?) hemmorage just blots it out. I Am waiting to see if i need to take a cerebral angiogram to get more detail on my blood vessels. BUt, he believes I Have a Cavernous Malformation He’ll get back to me in the next few days letting me know if I need the test 80% likely. If such an anomaly is found, it is likely that it will require surgery to fix it.
in the meanwhile I am taking the next fe days off of work as sick days, as I’m just wiped out lately (likely a symptom of the cerebral hemmorhage).
that is all for now.