Performance Review

31 March 2009, 10:14

I don’t know why I was nervous going into my 6 week surgeon’s review - it felt like my work performance was being evaluated and those 6 weeks of sitting on my arse watching Dr. Phil were going to catch up with me.

In fact, the surgeon didn’t actually do anything apart from remarking that I was “looking well”, admiring his handiwork on the incision (it was a mighty fine job) and was really only there to answer my questions (I had a lot, here is an abridged list):

When can I drive? At 3 months, so one more month.

When can I stop taking Dilantin (anti-seizure drug)? Start weaning myself off them now (hoorah!)

What are my chances of having another aneurysm? Possible but not likely - at present I have no other aneurysms in my brain but if one has a genetic predisposition to them, they can form but usually take 20-30 years to do so.

Will the headaches go away? ”Dunno” (always a reassuring response from a top neurosurgeon). They should get better over time but it takes some people (hopefully not me!) 6-12 months to be fully rid of them.

What are the chances of the clip coming out? Rare - 99% of clips say “We’ll stay”!

Should I get Scout checked out? This made me sad - he said yes, she should be checked as a precaution in her 20’s. I was kinda hoping he would cry “Get outta here!”

When can I go back to work? Up to me, but most subarachs go back gradually at first on reduced duties (2-3 hours a day or 2-3 days a week) at around 3 months until they go back full-time at 6 months. He said I wasn’t to push myself too hard, but I’m really trying to balance my wish to go back to work to stymie the intellectual atrophy one usually gets from watching too much Dr. Phil and the need to take it slowly (patience not being something I am renowned for). I can’t use a computer for longer than 15-20 minutes at the moment before I feel like throwing up and my work is computer-based, so that’s going to be an interesting conversation with my boss!

He also showed me some of the angiogram and CAT scans which I’ll get on a disk and share with the world at some stage.

So overall, my performance is definitely Top 10-worthy - not many people who have a subarachnoid haemorrhage come out of it with basically no residual deficits.

Now, where’s my performance bonus?

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When a Headache is not just a Headache

29 March 2009, 19:05

One of the most significant memories I have of Primary School is of a girl running screaming across the schoolgrounds at lunchtime into the main quadrangle and falling to the ground, dead. She’d burst an aneurysm. I still remember that day clearly. My mum was on canteen duty. My 4th grade teacher explained what had happened the following day. And I remember thinking “How can an 8-year old girl suddenly fall down. dead?” I don’t remember her name.

Experts reckon that roughly 1-2% of the population have aneurysms, most of which never burst. That’s a hell of a lot of people out there walking around with a potential time bomb in their head.

I suppose I’ve always had headaches, although I only remember them being a problem since Uni. I took valium (v. useful at Uni and sure as hell better than dope), went to a physio and they disappeared. Until the next time. So over the years I just thought they were stress headaches brought on by neck and shoulder pain and ridiculous uni/work/life deadlines. Now of course I wonder whether they were the early signs of having the aneurysm.

I had an iridology read care of my work’s alternative Health campaign last year and the lady asked me if I got many headaches as there was a fleck in the “Brain” section of the iris chart. When I said yes, she was adamant that I go get them checked out (I didn’t.). I kind of dismissed it at the time as being alternative hoo-hah, but of course, that conversation haunts me now.

You could have an aneurysm. Many have conjectured that aneurysms run in families but no-one in my family has ever had one. I also have 0 of the risk factors of rupturing an aneurysm:

• Smoking
• High Blood pressure
• Kidney disease
• Age (over 40)
• Excessive Alcohol use

OK. Maybe that last one may have been a bit of a risk but I certainly wouldn’t be chucked into the bucket for risky rupture.

My community message for the day is that if you are plagued by persistent headaches, get it checked out. Don’t lull yourself into thinking “It won’t happen to me”. When I was in the hospital, with plenty of time to ponder on what had just happened, I didn’t think “why me?” rather I conceded “Well, why not me?”

Personally, I blame Bunnings. I mean, do they really have to have so many different types of rope to choose from?

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Tom and Tara's Wedding

28 March 2009, 09:35

Our dear friends Tom and Tara were married in Melbourne last weekend. Ceremony at St. Peter’s Anglican Church with the reception in the Fitzroy Gardens.

It was a beautiful day/evening, everyone was frocked up (discovered, rather satisfyingly, that cleavage makes v. handy distraction from head scar…) and it was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends I haven’t seen for an ice age. It was also my first “event” post-op so it was brilliant to be out of the house, soaking up the balmy early-autumn ambience with good conversation and atmosphere of joy (sorry, bucket at the ready).

I was pumped up to the eyeballs with oxycodone and panadeine forte and had to sit for much of the cocktail reception but it was such a lovely event. Tough not to be able to touch the champers though. I was considering not taking the oxy so I could just have one glass (all for Tom and Tara, you understand), but thought better of it.

Aneurysm headache + hangover headache = A shit load of pain and regret the next morning…

We bailed just before the speeches (but after the cake cutting), around 8.30 pm, quite a bit longer than I’d expected to last.

Sigh. New Love.

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Part IV: Aneursym, the Aftermath

22 March 2009, 10:02

Although those early days were painful, I tried to stay pragmatic and keep my sense of humour. Having your brain opened up and a window cut into your skull tends to put things into perspective. I was alive. About 50% of people who burst an aneurysm don’t survive (15% don’t even make it to hospital) - pretty sobering statistics.

I won’t officially be out of the woods until the 3 month mark, but so far I’ve had no ostensible side effects apart from a bitch of a headache. My aneurysm was on the right side of my frontal lobe so I could have had significant memory and creativity loss or inability to problem solve (career inferno!).

The thing that haunts me is why did cousin Annie choose that particular time to spew forth into the noggin? Why at Bunnings? Most people that burst aneurysms are doing something physically stressful - makin’ sweet sweet lurve, straining over turd on loo, giving birth. I know that the vast selection of rope on offer at Bunnings is an excitement in itself, but aneurysm-bursting worthy? I think not. [Although I can see the ad campaign now - “Bunnings - so exciting, your brain will bleed…”]

As fate would have it, that 15 minute window was the only time that would have resulted in a good outcome that day. If I’d been at home or in the car (heaven forbid with Scout in the back) - either could have been disastrous. If I’d have burst Annie only 24 hours later, when the victims from the Victorian Bushfires started pouring into Melbourne hospitals, I may have had a protracted wait in Emergency (or been rerouted to a smaller hospital) and things may have turned out very differently.

Now, 6 weeks after it happened, I’m learning to live with it day by day. It can actually get quite depressing, almost anti-climactic. In hospital, it’s crisis management time so easy to suck it up and get on with it (“Brain Surgery? No worries, bring it on!”) At home, it’s actually harder - I can’t drive, I’m off work for at least the next couple of weeks so pretty much housebound, on major league painkillers and that clusterfuck of a headache is on my mind all the time which, at times, has me reaching for the laundered straitjacket (but smacking my hand away just in time).

But it aint all dump-city, hell no. I have continually been touched by the love and support that everyone has shown me - friends, family, our neighbours, my work team (most of whom I haven’t even met yet!) even strangers on this blog. With no family in town, one of our neighbours/friends opened their home and took Scout in for the first two nights of the incident, and fed both her and McG - without them I don’t know how we would have coped.

And I would have to say that my marriage has grown even stronger. I pick my battles. I let go of things that I previously wouldn’t have. McG has been Scout’s main carer, housekeeper, chef, launderer, chauffeur, resident Rock. I’ve always known he will be there for me if the going got tough, but this has proven it.

As for my Scout - we’ve always been close, but now I make sure I spend every day appreciating how remarkable she is. And even though my brain can’t cope with her tantrums, I’m more sympathetic towards her - she has gone through a hell of a time with her mum away for two weeks (and I just disappeared, it wasn’t like she had any warning) so I’m more patient. I just sit and watch her play where before I would have been busy “doing” things.

I consider myself a very lucky woman. I’m alive and I have so much to be thankful for.

End of Epiphany.

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Part III: The discharge (no, not that kind...)

19 March 2009, 15:37

On Day 10, I was moved into the “regular” ward without all the 24/7 attention and 2am drawing of blood (taking blood out of me is like getting it from a stone and it had taken one nurse 6 tries, including an attempt in my feet before she gave up…)

After the “Marge” incident the night before and the chronic lack of sleep I’d had in HDU, the nurses were practically high-fiving me on the way out.

I was in a ward of 3 beds with two lovely middle-age ladies who were both poised to start chemo, poor buggers, and I was relieved that they were both quiet and self-possessed. At 3pm, one of the ladies was transferred out. Have no idea where she went. She simply disappeared.

At 5pm, I had a couple of friends visiting when a bloke was wheeled in to my ward. He was moaning pneumatically in pain at roughly 100 decibels - and every 15 seconds or so he’d let out this awful sobbing sound - he was clearly suffering. My friends and I traded looks of “You. Have. Got. To. Be. Joking”.

I’m sure this does not cast me in a good light, after all he was in undisputed pain, but fuckit, I hadn’t slept in 10 days, could they not have put him in a private room? I thought maybe he might stop once the painkillers kicked in, but alas, no. Being in a ward with a loud moaner was one thing as I’d had plenty of those in HDU, but having to listen to someone in incredible pain and not be able to do anything about it is Hell. So I did the only thing a self-respecting, sleep-deprived subarach could do.

I had a meltdown.

I fled to the nurses station in tears sobbing that I felt really sorry for the bloke in my room as he was in obvious pain but pleeeeease could I be moved to another room as I haven’t slept in 10 days. The father of the bloke had followed me, and asked the nurses why was I crying? I couldn’t work out if he was upset for me or angry at me that I was blubbering to the nurses.

A half-hour later the nurses came in to say that they were swapping bloke with a lady from another room. But I felt awful then as that would mean someone else would have to listen. Even when they moved him I could still hear the moans from several rooms away.

Although a nurse woke me at 2am for my 4-hourly nimodopine, I actually got some sleep. In a blissfully dark room.

I was only in the ward for a day before they transferred me to the MediHotel - a sweet section of RMH where patients are expected to be independent (taking their own meds etc.) but still with nursing staff on hand just in case.

My discharge seemed to happen really suddenly. One moment I was in HDU experiencing sometimes overwhelming attention, the next I was advised that I’d be going home the next day. My recovery was going well and I seemed to have no cognitive or motor deficits (apart from predisposition to tantrums) so they were confident I’d be OK at home.

I don’t mind saying that I was shitting myself about going home. I wanted to get out of Regan-farm but I was worried that something would go wrong at home. Not ever having had an aneurysm before, I didn’t know what symptoms of stroke or delayed complications to look out for.

So it was with mixed feelings that I headed home on Wednesday the 18th, 3 days before McG’s birthday. He’d put in his birthday request that I be home by his birthday, and he got his wish…

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