To know or not to know?
25 April 2009, 18:21
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’d had headaches leading up to the aneurysm but didn’t get them checked out. McG and I were talking about this and whether actually having a CAT scan and the aneurysm diagnosed before it burst would have necessarily been an advantageous thing.
Look, I know I could have bloody-well died, was very lucky that I didn’t die and obviously waiting until it burst wasn’t ideal (it’s not as if it’s like finding out the gender of your unborn child), but, you know, everything was over so fast – it burst, I was in an ambulance, getting a CAT scan and having surgery within 24 hours of Mount Annie erupting – because it was over so quickly (save the interminable recovery period), I didn’t really have time to think about it, to think about potentially dying on the operating table. It simply had to be done.
If annie had been diagnosed beforehand and there had been humming and hahing about “Should I have the surgery?” (as it was so close to a major artery they wouldn’t have coiled it either, it would have been a full-blown craniotomy), “Would I be OK walking around with a timebomb in my head for god knows how long?” or “Would surgery even be imperative?”, the anxiety would have been unbearable.
If, in fact, it had been diagnosed at all. When I had the CT scan at the hospital, they couldn’t see the aneursym. The only reason they knew it had to be there somewhere was because of the bleed. The angiogram revealed the secret little sucker, but if I’d complained of headaches, how likely would they have sent me for an angiogram if a CT scan had been clear???
I am an immediate person. I like to get things out of the way now. Anticipation is not something I enjoy – enduring a necessary pro and con dialogue inside my head is tantamount to Chinese water torture. So, in a way, I’m glad it all happened suddenly with no warning. At least if I’d died, I wouldn’t have known any different and I wouldn’t have spent months wondering, pondering and panicking.
Heavy. Sorry about that.
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