Friday feels like so long ago, but it was only 2 days.
We got to the hospital at 5am for check-in. Good thing we aren't getting used to Arizona time, so that was like 8am for us.
They took me to pre-op for quick blood work and to start an IV. Then I was rolled through the GIGANTIC hospital to the gamma department. The nurses there were SO nice! One by one, the doctors all came in and explained the morning itinerary to me. At 7:30 the anesthesiologist came in and said he was going to put me to sleep so they can drill the frame to my head. The next thing I knew I was waking up at 7:43 with a frame on my head. Me: "What time is it?" Nurse: "7:43" Me: "Is it still Friday?" Nurse: "Yes, it's still Friday." Me: "But am I still in Arizona?" Nurse: "haha, yepp" Me: "Ok, good. I like Arizona. It's hot here." And then I fell asleep. I woke up as I was being wheeled to get an MRI. I had to take off my glasses to get the frame on, so I couldn't really see and I was still super woozy from the anesthesia so it was just weird. All the nurses and MRI technicians were introducing themselves to me, but I just saw fuzzy people who all looked the same to me. I must have fallen asleep in the MRI because the next thing I remember was them bringing me to get an angiogram.
I made sure to introduce Abigail to the technicians and doctors at that point (my nurse kept calling her Abby; that was nice)
As I was getting positioned (having my caged head attached to the table) for the angiogram I made sure the doctors knew they were operating on me, not Abigail. They understood, and I drifted off into sedation.
The weirdest thing happened to me during the angiogram while I was sedated. Sedated implies that I am not under general anesthesia, but I am super relaxed that I'm in that limbo between delirious and asleep. All of a sudden as they were nearing the end of the angiogram, I realized where I was and what was happening and I could feel everything they were doing. They had locally numbed the point where they penetrated, but I felt everything around it. I forced myself to go to sleep because that was just too weird for me.
Next thing I knew, I was in the recovery room. All of my pre-tests were done, and the doctors were doing the hard part-- the planning. They have to plan exactly where to shoot the beams and at what level of radiation to ensure protection of the surrounding tissue and obliteration of the AVM. They spent a couple of hours planning this and checking and rechecking it. While they worked on that, I was in the recovery room, more and more aware of what was going on. I wasn't allowed to sit up because of my angiogram, so I was laying flat on my back and asked my mom to bring me my contacts from my bag-- I couldn't wear glasses because I had this frame on my head and it was driving me crazy that I couldn't see.
Laying flat on my back, I opened my contact case, opened my eyes and surprising to everyone in the room, including myself, I put my contacts in.
So, now that I could see, I was even more aware of what was going on. I went to brush my hand through my hair and realized, I couldn't feel my entire head!!
"I CAN'T FEEL MY HEAD!!!!" I freaked out that something was wrong.
Turns out, that was normal. They injected my head with a bunch of Novocain type anesthesia to be able to drill these 4 screws into my head without me feeling the pain while it was on my head for the day.
I can't even begin to explain how amazing the nurses were as they waited with my parents and me for the planning to be done.
The doctors came in at 1pm to tell me that the planning was complete and if all goes as planned they feel that there is a <1% chance that the AVM will survive the hit.
They took me to the gamma knife room and buckled my head cage to the table and turned on Pandora in the room so I can listen to music. The treatment lasted about a half hour and then the doctors came in and took literally a powerdrill to take the cage off my head.
The doctor came to talk to my parents and me after I was back in the recovery room. "Everything went perfectly as planned. In 1 year you will need an MRI to check on the AVM; it will most likely still be there. But in 2 years when you get an MRI it might be gone and by the 3rd year if its gone for 2 consecutive scans, we will do an angiogram to make sure it is in fact totally gone. We feel there is a <1% chance that the AVM will still be there after the 2nd year and definitely by the 3rd year it should be gone."
They gave me the paper work for discharging me and by 3 we were ready to leave.
The nurses told me I will have soreness on all of the puncture points for a week or so. I have to keep small circle bandaids on the puncture points on my forehead until they are totally gone; to prevent scaring. They said to take it easy for 2 weeks because that is the window of potential swelling. Other than that, I can go back to regular activity as if nothing ever happened.
This has been the craziest week of my life, but I am very pleased with how it turned out!!
Braink you all again for your outpour of support to me and my family during this weird time.
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