and then it was Tuesday and the aftermath

Read the previous post first.

Monday night I washed with the special soap, clean sheets on the bed, no pets allowed to sleep with me, got up at 3:30 AM, showered with the special soap again, put on clean clothes all as instructed, left the house at 4:30 and arrived at the hospital a little before 5:30 AM for the diagnostic cerebral angiogram. Checked in, told us to be seated and they would call me directly and we waited and waited as person after person who arrived after us got called back. About an hour later the guy comes and asked me for my ID, they are having trouble finding my account. He comes back after a while to tell me that my procedure had been cancelled and that was why they couldn’t find my account. No one notified me, who canceled it and why? Some night nurse canceled it last night but the head nurse on the floor was calling the doctor to find out what was going on and as soon as she talked to the doctor, he would have more information. 

So we waited again and after awhile the guy comes back and says I have two options, the doctor is willing to go ahead and do the procedure but I’ll have to wait until he does the other two scheduled after mine for today and no one could tell me how long the wait would be or I could reschedule. I’m here, I’ve had the pre-op, I've done all the preparation, I’ll wait especially since the neurosurgeon is leaving town again next week. Finally they call us back to the staging area where the attendant gives me a gown, tells me to get naked, climb into the bed with a puffy space type blanket that warm air is being blown into (much better than the warm blankets that cool off in 5 minutes), puts support hose on my legs that come up over my knees (to prevent blood clots she says) and again we wait. About 9 the nurse comes in to start prepping me, says I’m next, scheduled for 10, takes my vitals and puts in the IV. I questioned her about the cancellation, did a nurse have that kind of authority? No, she said, that no one really knows what happened, that Monday was totally chaotic with doctors and patients canceling because they couldn’t get to the hospital and somehow mine got sucked into that, that the hospital was running on generators right now, no wifi and the internet was sketchy, she had to write down all the stuff to enter it into the computer later but this area was fine and they would move me to the pre-op area soon, which they did about 10. 

So now we’re in the pre-op waiting for the doctor, anesthesiologist, and the surgical nurse to come talk to me and while we are waiting we hear more horror stories about yesterday from the nurses who are very chatty. About 11:30 the neurosurgeon stops by, assures me that all is well, did I have any questions. Yes, how tired are you and have you eaten lunch? Says he’s not tired and he’s going for lunch now and they will do the procedure right after. The anesthesiologist comes by and the surgical nurse who stays with me explaining minute by minute what’s going to happen. I will be awake because the doctor will be talking me asking me at times to hold perfectly still while he takes pictures of my brain but I won’t feel a thing, which I didn’t, that she would be by my side the entire time. Once in the operating room and in place on the table and all the prep done getting me in place and immobilized she asked me what music I wanted...Stevie Ray Vaughn. So I lay there with my eyes closed listening to music, being completely still and not breathing when necessary and about 15 minutes later it was over and they wheeled me out to post-op recovery and after a while the doctor came by with the results. 

No aneurysm he says. He showed me a picture of my basilar artery and the junction that the MRI identified as an aneurysm but it was normal and the reason it looked like an aneurysm is because the artery that branches off to the right is sort of twisted around (but perfectly fine) and so didn’t show up on the fuzzy MRI image. So he says you don’t need to see me again and he left. I stayed there for about an hour and then they took me to a different recovery area where Marc joined me again and where I had to stay flat on my back for another two hours. And then they discharged me and we got home about 6 PM.

Still no power at home but we were able to get dinner at the other restaurant which was now open and then spent a miserably hot and humid night. Wednesday morning, still no power so we went out for breakfast and then I called my friends at the end of the street and daughter who also had no power to tell them if they wanted a hot shower or to fill up water containers to come here because while everyone else is on a well which doesn’t function with no power, we are on city water and have a gas water heater. I talked to Rocky about finding the shingles and he came down and climbed up on the roof over there. The entire ridge line of shingles was either off or loose and had to be replaced, all 77” of it. The man is an angel. He had already been sealing another neighbor’s roof who he looks after and he took care of it right away, getting his helper up there to take off the row of shingles while he went to get new ones, working up there in the sun and heat and got that roof repaired while his own roof suffered damage from a tree scraping it when it fell, but since he rents he had to get the OK from his landlord so he would get paid. My daughter also had several trees uprooted, one right next to her house but instead of crushing her house it fell away and demolished the chicken coop (all of the chickens are fine).

Finally we got the power back on about 6 PM yesterday, got take-out for dinner and slept well in the nice cool house last night. Still recovering from my procedure, having to stay off my feet the rest of this week while the incision in my femoral artery heals so I can’t get out there and start cleaning up the yard. And then I have the last procedure on my heart on Monday with another five days or so of recovery. So it’s going to be a while before I’m able to start cleaning up around here and emptying the refrigerator and freezer is the first big task anyway.

the rest of the story

The afib stopped Friday late morning about 11:30, back to a sweet sinus rhythm, and I felt great all day until about 5:30, quarter to six when I was sitting on the couch and this feeling washed over me leaving me feeling light headed, or probably more accurate, a little disassociated with a weakness in my arms and legs and a feeling of things just not being right, this was not normal and I was not in afib. I told my husband I was feeling really weird. Do you need to go to the hospital he asked. Maybe I replied. So we got in the car and he took me to Memorial Hermann SW hospital in Houston which is where my electrophysiologist has his  practice in the Heart Rhythm Center there on the campus. It took about 45 minutes to get there and on the way I texted both my kids and Sarah who had just left work and was about 10 minutes away said she’d meet us there. 

Sarah was there and waiting when Marc dropped me off at the ER and went to park the car. We walked in and I told the woman at the intake that I might be having a heart attack or heart related problem. First thing they did an EKG and took my blood pressure and told me to wait til they called me. Then they took blood and urine. Back to waiting. Then they did a CAT scan of my head and neck. Back to waiting. Then they did a chest x-ray. Back to waiting. By now the disassociation and weakness had passed. Then they called me again and took me back to an actual room where they took my blood pressure again and set an IV. Is that really necessary I asked. Yes, in case we need to blah blah blah. But then she went on to say that they don’t put the IV in at intake because drug addicts who have collapsed veins will come in and complain about something, get the IV and then leave and use the IV to get high. 

Sarah was with me during all these previous tests and once in the room she went and fetched Marc from the waiting room. They took me back for another CAT scan with contrast (injected dye in the IV) and then we waited again for the results of all the tests. The PA came in with all the results, heart fine and strong, lungs great, no sign of heart attack or stroke, arteries clear, also no explanation for the pain in my back Tuesday or the disassociation and weakness that sent me to the ER. So all that was fine but…the CAT scan with contrast showed “Mildly tortuous basilar artery without significant artherosclerosis or narrowing. Focal ectasia or fusiform aneurysm involving the basilar tip measuring 5 mm.” So, I have an aneurysm. Yay me!

By now it’s about 3 AM, the doctor wakes up the neurosurgeon to see what he wants to do so they admit me for an MRI on Saturday and I can either stay in the hospital til Monday when he can do a cerebral angiogram or go home and arrange the procedure as an out-patient. Sarah and Marc went home and I got up to a room about 3:30 when they put a heart monitor on me, blood pressure cuff and the finger thing for blood oxygen level, took more blood, attached a drip to the IV. I might have dozed off and on for a couple of hours and then around 7 AM they did an echocardiogram which was kind of cool. I could see my heart beating and inside it at the valves opening and closing. The tech took a bunch of pictures and measurements of the inside of my heart. 

Finally the neurologist’s assistant came in and interviewed me and explained the procedure for the MRI and what they would be looking for. If the MRI was “clean” as in no blood or seepage in my brain, they would do a cerebral angiogram where they would insert a camera into the artery in my groin and snake it up into my brain to get a good look at the aneurysm and then decide if surgery was necessary or just to keep an eye on it. Whatever that means. How do you keep an eye on something in my brain that you can’t see.

Then they did the MRI which was an experience all on its own. First I laid down on the table they would insert in the machine, then put ear plugs in my ears and a bolster under my knees for comfort, covered me with a warm blanket and rolled me to the machine where they put dense but soft foam up against both sides of my head to prevent me from moving it which further dampened my hearing, put a plastic sort of cage over my face, told me not to move my head, and rolled me far enough in so that my head and neck could be viewed. I knew there would be loud thumping and there was that but also all sorts of other percussion sounds. Ten minutes later it was over.

About an hour later the neurologist came in, MRI was clean and I could stay til Monday for the angiogram but if the surgeon had an emergency it might not get done that day or, because both the neurologist and the neurosurgeon were confident that the aneurysm was stable for now, I could go home and schedule it with his office within the next two weeks.

By now I’ve had almost no sleep since Thursday night, I’m uncomfortable, I have a headache, and I’m tired of being poked and prodded so I opted to go home. Sarah came and picked me up and I got home about 6:30, went to bed at 7:30, woke at 9:30 to scarf down two pieces of pizza and take my meds and went back to bed and slept til 7:30 this morning.

And no, the aneurysm was not the cause of any of the weird symptoms or feelings. They couldn’t tell me anything definitive about them but speculated that the pain in my back was probably related to the intense afib episode I was having and perhaps the weird feeling was also related to having been in afib for 65 hours straight even though it had stopped by then.

So yeah, I’ve got a small aneurysm in my brain which is scary as fuck.

Thank you all of you for telling me to get thee to the ER and ramping up my fear even though, as it turns out, I wasn’t having a heart attack. It might never have been discovered otherwise. And I might have lived a very long life with it and never knowing…or not. It’s the ‘or not’ part that now hangs over me. 

I’m trying not to think about it because when I do, well, I just don’t want to go there. When aneurysms blow they are almost always fatal.

Fun times, right?