Grandmother's Fatal AVM
Winona (Toni)
Duvall
Goodbye Nanny, we all love you.
You will never be fogotten and never quit smiling.
Born February 16, 1932
Died December 10, 1997
We miss you.
14 January 1998
My grandmother, at age 65 was diagnosed with AVM. There had been a few unexplained incidents in the past 10 years that make sense now. To think that if the doctors would have found it years ago that she possibly would be okay now.
She had her first incident around the middle of October, 1997. She called my mother and me complaining of nausea and uncontrollable shaking. We met the ambulance at her house and then went on to the hospital. Her temperature and blood pressure were high. She stayed there for almost 4 hours and they just said that she had a seizure. She went to her doctor and was diagnosed. She told me that she had a mass on her brain and that she wouldn't live through another attack. We didn't think she would ever have another. He put her on Dilantin to control her seizures. At the time I did not know what the name of her condition was. I believe the doctor told grandmother more than she told us. I believe he actually gave her a time frame.
She had complained for years of this numbness in her right leg. So that made me believe that the mass was on the Parental lobe. The day after Thanksgiving she was shopping and her leg went totally numb in a store at the shopping mall. She had to stand there for almost thirty minutes before she had some feeling.
December the 7th she was at home alone and called my aunt to come to sit with her complaining of a headache. My aunt lives an hour away so she called someone at the police department to sit with my grandmother until she could get there. My mother and I was on our way back from Georgia so I don't know all the detail from that time. When my mother and I had got there about 2 hours later, my grandmother was in a coma and was being transported to another hospital. She wasn't suppose to live through the 45 minute trip. She was in a coma from Sunday the 7th until Wednesday the 10th, when she passed away.
My grandmother was an extremely strong woman. What is odd about all of this is that she went on and on for a week about how great she had felt before that Sunday. The best she had felt in years is what she had said.
Author no longer active March/18/2011
© Copyright 1998 Amy Mathis
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