Part I: Patient 51

27 February 2009, 17:25

On Friday February 6, I blew an aneurysm. Blowing an aneurysm really blows. Let me tell you the story (although if you’re squeamish about medical procedures, perhaps give it a miss…)

During the day I had a niggling headache, nothing serious. I was working from home and didn’t have too much on - I was due to start on a new project the following week.

Around 4.30, I decide to go to Bunnings just before collecting Scout from creche. The people who’d installed our exterior blinds (which didn’t freaking work - long story, although not as long as this one) refused to come out to fix them until the following Wednesday, so I was on a mission to get a reflective silver tarp to protect Scout’s room as it was going to be 43 degrees the following day.

Drive to Bunnings. Get tarp. Head to counter. Start to feel rather woozy. Know I’m going to faint but think, I’ve never fainted before, is this what it feels like when you’re about to faint? The headache kind of returned but not significantly and next thing I know I came to with about ten people encircling me. I’d done a 360 spin (for dramatic effect, I assume) and fell onto one of the pallets. I was out for 30 seconds.

Phil from Bunnings got me a wheelchair to take me outside. At first I thought I might have broken my neck or back as I couldn’t move it and it hurt like a bastard. My headache was intense and halfway up one of the aisles I started to throw up and felt really weird. The staff were talking migraines (I’m not prone to them) but Phil calls the ambulance “just to go for an observation”. Phil is of course now my fucking hero.

My “migraine” however, evidently paled when compared to Scout possibly spending the night at creche, so I had Phil call McG to collect her. Hell, don’t worry about the fact your wife is about to be carted off in an ambulance, just pick up your daughter…

In the ambulance, I was throwing up (not particularly easy lying horizontal with a neck brace on, let me tell you) and totally out of it. The Austin and SVH were closed to ambulances because of a chemical spill, so I had the choice of the Northern or RMH. My choice of RMH probably saved my life. Husband, on the other hand, had no clue where I was for a good couple of hours because of the confusion. And because buckethead had forgotten to take her mobile phone with her, he had to call 000 to find out where I was.

The next 5 or 6 hours passed in a blur of extreme pain with me sucking down penthrox (an inhaler like pain relief which works immediately but stops the moment you stop sucking). In RMH Emergency, I knew something was very wrong but I didn’t know what. McG showed up once he’d finally found me and held the hand not occupied by penthrox. Brought me tales that my godsend neighbours had fed Scout and she was now sleeping peacefully in their front room.

Finally got in for a CT scan where they discovered the bleed was a subarachnoid haemorrhage in my frontal lobe. I then had to have two angiograms so they could locate the aneurysm.

Angiograms are seriously hinky. They shave half your groin, bung in a couple of locals and inject a catheter which goes up to your brain. The exact machinations of how this all worked were a bit beyond me but I trusted that they knew what they were doing. The weird shit is the dye they inject into your brain. It’s like hot coffee travelling up your neurones - at least it would be if I knew what that might feel like. I later discovered that back in the 60’s patients were made to lie in a bath of ice during an angiogram (!) so in retrospect I felt rather fortunate that it just involved a bit of slight pubic indignity, a sluggishly warm caffeinated brain and a 4-hour horizontal lie-in afterward. The angiogram located the annie but alas, it was too close to an artery for them to coil it off so it was off to craniotomy central the next day for moi!

As the bleed was only Grade 1 (out of 4, 4 being the most severe) they kept me stable overnight in Bed 51 in the neuro HDU (High Dependency Unit) where I was to reside for the next 10 days. That night I got my first taste of an extreme paranoia attack dished out by one of the patients nearby (more on this later). Obs were every half-hour to make sure I didn’t stroke out on them.

Saturday was a complete blur. I don’t remember a thing about going into surgery although apparently I was lighthearted and joking with the nurses just beforehand which they found odd (!) The surgery involved (and I did warn you about medical procedures) opening scalp from mid forehead to ear, cutting window into skull, clipping aneurysm to stop bleed and hoovering up much of the bothersome red stuff around the wound (a lot of the blood that had already leaked out metabolises apparently). The procedure was 5 hours and, I’m guessing a success given I’m now able to blog (albeit sporadically).

OK, I’ll continue story once my next Panadeine Forte has kicked in…

Posted by Kinki on 27 February 2009, 17:25

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35 Degrees of Headache

13 February 2009, 12:07

Just a quick update to let the readers of this blog know that Kim had an aneurysm (a subarachnoid haemorrhage, actually) last Friday, which caused her to faint while standing in the queue of a checkout at the local hardware store. A neurosurgeon operated on Saturday; the procedure went as planned, and she is being closely monitored as she recovers at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Kim is young, fit, and a non-smoker, so all of these elements in combination mean she has a good chance of making a full recovery. However, it will take time, and she won’t be feeling herself for a while.

I was in two minds about whether to post about this, but I know that many of Kim’s readers have followed this blog since she started it nearly 7 years ago, and would want to know about Kim’s status and be concerned for her well being, so I decided to write this.

I suspect she’ll go quiet on the blog front for a while, given she has other things on her mind (Boom boom—her joke, not mine!). However we’re quietly optimistic that she’ll be back posting at some stage down the track.

And when she does, you can count on it being a doozy.

Matt (Kim’s husband)

Posted by mattymcg on 13 February 2009, 12:07

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