What is an AVM?

A few months ago I went to the neurologist, Dr. Schick, because I was having horrible debilitating headaches. He sent me for an MRI, on the MRI they found that I had an AVM, arteriovenous malformation. An AVM is not very common, nor is it believed to be genetic. They assume I have had it since birth, but they cannot say for sure, because the studies are still very new as are the treatments.
Our bodies have arteries and veins. Arteries go from the heart to the rest of the body; therefore they have thick walls and are made for high pressure blood pumping. Veins go from the body to the heart; therefore they have thin walls and are made for lower pressure blood pumping.
An AVM is a tangle of arteries and veins, where arteries are pumping directly into veins. This possesses two potential problems. Firstly, there’s the potential for the vein to bust because the artery is pumping high pressure blood into it, and the vein is not equip to handle that. But there is also the other problem where the oxygenated and deoxygenated blood is getting mixed together in this tangle and that can cause issues throughout the rest of my body.
To get a better idea of the size and extent of my AVM, Dr. Ortiz performed an angiogram on Friday, December 23rd. For the angiogram, they went in my thigh through my heart up to my brain, injected dye, and took pictures of the AVM with measurements etc. so they could have all the information about it.
The found that in my brain, in my cerebellum, I have my AVM. It is located 2 millimeters from my brain stem, which is what makes mine extremely dangerous. If God forbid, any bleeding or hemorrhaging were to occur from my AVM the doctors can say with certainty that I would not be able to recover, or possibly not survive that; because of the location. However, a bleeding AVM in another location in the brain would be detrimental but not life threatening. The doctors agreed that I did not need to rush into the OR tomorrow but I cannot push it off for even a year.