One of the reasons for heading down to Portland for our family vacation was to have a consult with the surgeon for my next brain surgery. When I had my ruptured aneurysm last November, a second unruptured aneurysm was found. It was deeper in the brain, and the surgeons were not able to do anything about it last November, simply because they had to deal with the already ruptured aneurysm first. But now it is time to take care of this second one, and the surgeon I consulted with, Dr. Johnny Delashaw, is the best vascular surgeon in the northwest. In fact, he trained Dr. Jonathan Carlson, who performed my first surgery.
Dr. Delashaw had me do a CTA scan with dye to determine exactly where the aneurysm is, and it is located deeper in the brain, and near where it feeds into my pituitary gland. So, he definitely wants it taken care of, and sooner rather than later would be ideal. I could do an outpatient type of surgery, where they could go in through my groin area, and do what is called stenting and coiling, where they first put in a nylon stent, and then put a coil or two into the aneurysm, with the assumption that the blood would then clot around the coil and the aneurysm would stop growing. However, there is a drug regimen before and after to adhere to, and continued monitoring via MRI's of the aneurysm. Plus, if it happens to rupture while in surgery, they would have to do an artery replacement because they couldn't clip it at that point. This could all be done locally by another doctor that Dr. Delashaw trained as well. Or I could go back to Portland and have Dr. Delashaw and his team clip off this second aneurysm, spend one or two nights in ICU, 3-4 days in the hospital, and be done with it. They would go in the same way as before, so no new scars, and because it hasn't ruptured, recovery time would be significantly less than my last 11 day stay in the hospital.
I'm really, really leaning to the clipping again. Yes, we would have to leave the kids for a week, but I've got lots of friends and family to help me out in that aspect. And my aunt and cousin have volunteered their homes outside of Portland for James to crash in for the week. I would probably plan it for mid-October, to stay well away from holidays, and before the weather to travel down there started to get really nasty.
So there it is - my life plan for the next few months! Surgery and recovery. But I'm leaning on God, and am confident that He's not done with me on this earth yet, so it will all go well. I'm fairly certain that my first aneurysm ruptured and was repaired without any side effects in order for the doctors to see this second, perhaps more dangerous aneurysm. God works in mysterious ways, and I'm not about to question the why's.
