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my story

bgpolo1 Message
22 Jul 2008, 03:11 PM

I am a 17 year old female who is active in sports and in relativly good shape. I have had episodes for the past couple of years where my vision will go away and ill have a loud ringing/buzzing in my ears and nausea followed by a headach. I have also have a history of migranes. I went to a pediatric neurologist in january right after the most recent episode and he thought i had complex migranes but wanted to be sure so i got an mra, mri, and an eeg. the eeg was clean but the mri came back with arteriovenous malformations in my left parietal lobe. i ended up have gamma knife radiation because of the location of my mri, my neurosurgeon said that i would have permanent neurological problems and most likely have a stroke once he got to the avm because it was too deep. i wanted to have surgery and just get it over with but i wanted to have a normal life. so march 14th me and my family went to the illinois gamma knife center which luckily is about 20 minutes from our house. my surgery went well, although they told me i would be fine the day after, bs, i had horrible headachs for three days after, my face swelled to the point where i couldnt even open my right eye (tho they did tell me this would happen, tho it wasnt until i was leaving...), i didnt go back to school til wednesday after (my surgery was on a friday) the holes from the halo took a while to heal and i have permant nerve damage on the right front side of my head from the pin but i can deal with that. i just went back for my 3 month visit (which was actually 4 months after bc my surgeon is always so booked) and luckily theres no swelling of my brain. my avm hasnt shrunk at all but they didnt expect it to so soon. i go back next march for another mri and visit and then the march after that i have an angiogram and i have a 90% chance of my avm being gone by then.