Chris went into the hospital Monday morning at 2:30 a.m. with a really bad headache, blurred vision, some motor skills problems etc. I thought he was having an aneurysm. After a CT scan, they found that he had some bleeding on the brain and transferred him to a different hospital. At the 2nd hospital, they did an MRI and found that he has what is known as an Arteriovenous Malformation, which is a type of a defect of malformed vessels in the brain which ruptured. They then transferred us to hospital number 3 in Fort Myers to a vascular brain surgeon who specializes in this type of defect and the surgery required to repair it.
Chris was supposed to undergo a brain angiogram today, but the doctor wound up doing surgery on another patient, and the patient had a worse case than anticipated, so Chris’ surgery is postponed until Thursday morning. After the angiogram on Thurs he will undergo an embolic procedure where they go into the brain via the femeral artery and inject a glue into the vessel bundle — there is some variation of what will happen at this point as it will depend on what everything is like in there — how many vessels, how many arteries feed the vessels. He may also have to have a craniotomy, where they remove a section of the skull and then remove the bundle from the brain.
While the rupture in the brain is the biggest issue, as it could be life-threatening, Chris has lost a good portion of his peripheral vision on his left side. He is incredibly frustrated as he cannot read very easily; he cannot grasp things that are in front of him without feeling around, and the doctor, who is among the top on the country for this, is fairly certain he will not regain his vision. Chris is concerned because this would mean that he could not work, and that he could not drive a car. I know this is secondary compared to the bleed in his brain, but it’s terrifying for him.