Finding this web site was very comforting. To know that others know how I feel and where I'm coming from.
I was 14 years old when I had an aneurysm. They told my parents I would not live through the night. When I made it through the night they told them I would be paralyzed and have major memory/brain handicaps. I remember being in the hospital and not knowing my friends or families names. I knew things about them but had to learn names all over again. When I left the hospital after 28 days the doctors couldn't believe it. They told me not to raise my heart rate for at least a month and they told my mother to get me sterilized because if I ever had children I would keel over. I made it through that first month and now have two children. It has been hard over the years - I get a lot of head aches and when I don't get enough sleep I get confused and sometimes talk like a fool.
When I thought that I had pretty much overcame this and could just move on I started getting very severe headaches, could not sleep, became very touchy and irritable. The doctor put me on anti-depressants and medicine to help me sleep. Nothing helped. So finally I decided to have an MRI (it had been 6 years). I thought they would just say every thing was fine but they found I had an AVM dead center in my brain.
I had a choice of open-brain surgery or Gamma Knife Therapy. I chose the Gamma-Knife. It has been two and a half years now and the healing is progressing just as it was planned. I can sleep now. I still have headaches now and then and some of them make me worry. There are nights when I am scared to go to sleep with a fear I may not wake up. Or when I get scatter-brained I get mad. I often tell people that if they ever come up with brain transplants I'll be first in line.
I always knew there had to be someone out there in my shoes - I just didn't know where. Thank you for all or your stories and I hope you all are doing better with each day!