I Love My Wife
My wife has a cerebral aneurysm. It's located on the anterior communicating artery. It's difficult to tell how big it is, but the best estimate doctors have made is that along its longest axis, it's about 7 mm. That's the point at which a lot of doctors recommend that people with aneurysms consider having it treated.
Most people with cerebral aneurysms go through their entire lives and never even know they have one; they found my wife's by accident because she had a CT scan for something else. People with cerebral aneurysms typically live perfectly normal lives — until it bursts. This happens to only a small percentage of people who have one, about 1 percent. If a cerebral aneurysm bursts, there is a 50 percent that the person will die instantly or within the next several days. Of the survivors, 50 percent suffer serious debilitating trauma. The remainder manage to survive and may very well go back to a normal life. Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys on Game of Thrones, suffered from a burst aneurysm in 2011 and had to have surgery for another in 2013. She suffered from aphasia and at one point couldn't remember her own name, but recovered quite well.
There are two common treatments for a cerebral aneurysm — clipping and coiling. Clipping involves actual surgery on the brain. The doctor goes into the brain and puts a clip on the neck of the aneurysm, sealing it off from the vessel it's on. Coil involves snaking a wire up a vessel from the patient's groin and filling the aneurysm with coiled up wire, sealing it off from the vessel. There's a new treatment option called WEB that is similar to coiling but puts a tiny nickel-titanium cage that unfolds into the aneurysm, but it has barely been approved and is still being tested by the company that developed it.
None of these treatment options are good for my wife. Clipping may be the best option, but as I wrote earlier, it involves open-brain surgery. My wife had a brain tumor removed 12 years ago, and still has significant scar tissue from that, which may be an issue for her having another brain surgery. She's not keen on the idea. Because of the aneurysm's unusual shape and configuration, the doctor is unsure if coiling is a good option. The company that created the WEB process rejected my wife as a candidate, so there's that.
We've been in to see a different neurosurgeon to get a second opinion, and his advice was that she should seriously consider treatment. It's been wait and watch for a while now because the odds of something going bad if we do nothing weren't significantly worse than the odds of something going bad during surgery, but that may be changing. We've got another appointment with the main neurosurgeon sometime this week.
This is on my mind today — it's always on my mind but today especially — because I called my wife around lunch time, and she didn't answer. I call my wife once or twice a day just to check up on her. She's home alone and I just want to make sure that she's all right. Normally, everything is fine. Today, though, I called, and she didn't answer. No problem. That's not completely unusual. She will often call me back if she missed my call. I waited a bit, but there was no call. I called again. No answer. I was starting to get a tad worried, but still things weren't completely unheard of. I called again. No answer.
Now I was starting to worry seriously. I called again. No answer. I ran out of the office to the car and headed home. Driving home, I called again. No answer.
During the drive, I had all sorts of bad scenarios going through my head. I was seriously worried, but not yet panicked.
I get home, go in, and there she is. Everything is fine. There's no problem. We check, and it turns out that she had somehow turned the ringer off on her phone.
My wife has had serious issues as long as I've known her. Some of them have been her own fault — self-created trauma — but enough of it has just happened. A brain tumor. Uterine cancer. And now this.
Sorry to dump here, but I just felt the need to vent a bit.
Most people with cerebral aneurysms go through their entire lives and never even know they have one; they found my wife's by accident because she had a CT scan for something else. People with cerebral aneurysms typically live perfectly normal lives — until it bursts. This happens to only a small percentage of people who have one, about 1 percent. If a cerebral aneurysm bursts, there is a 50 percent that the person will die instantly or within the next several days. Of the survivors, 50 percent suffer serious debilitating trauma. The remainder manage to survive and may very well go back to a normal life. Emilia Clarke, who played Daenerys on Game of Thrones, suffered from a burst aneurysm in 2011 and had to have surgery for another in 2013. She suffered from aphasia and at one point couldn't remember her own name, but recovered quite well.
There are two common treatments for a cerebral aneurysm — clipping and coiling. Clipping involves actual surgery on the brain. The doctor goes into the brain and puts a clip on the neck of the aneurysm, sealing it off from the vessel it's on. Coil involves snaking a wire up a vessel from the patient's groin and filling the aneurysm with coiled up wire, sealing it off from the vessel. There's a new treatment option called WEB that is similar to coiling but puts a tiny nickel-titanium cage that unfolds into the aneurysm, but it has barely been approved and is still being tested by the company that developed it.
None of these treatment options are good for my wife. Clipping may be the best option, but as I wrote earlier, it involves open-brain surgery. My wife had a brain tumor removed 12 years ago, and still has significant scar tissue from that, which may be an issue for her having another brain surgery. She's not keen on the idea. Because of the aneurysm's unusual shape and configuration, the doctor is unsure if coiling is a good option. The company that created the WEB process rejected my wife as a candidate, so there's that.
We've been in to see a different neurosurgeon to get a second opinion, and his advice was that she should seriously consider treatment. It's been wait and watch for a while now because the odds of something going bad if we do nothing weren't significantly worse than the odds of something going bad during surgery, but that may be changing. We've got another appointment with the main neurosurgeon sometime this week.
This is on my mind today — it's always on my mind but today especially — because I called my wife around lunch time, and she didn't answer. I call my wife once or twice a day just to check up on her. She's home alone and I just want to make sure that she's all right. Normally, everything is fine. Today, though, I called, and she didn't answer. No problem. That's not completely unusual. She will often call me back if she missed my call. I waited a bit, but there was no call. I called again. No answer. I was starting to get a tad worried, but still things weren't completely unheard of. I called again. No answer.
Now I was starting to worry seriously. I called again. No answer. I ran out of the office to the car and headed home. Driving home, I called again. No answer.
During the drive, I had all sorts of bad scenarios going through my head. I was seriously worried, but not yet panicked.
I get home, go in, and there she is. Everything is fine. There's no problem. We check, and it turns out that she had somehow turned the ringer off on her phone.
My wife has had serious issues as long as I've known her. Some of them have been her own fault — self-created trauma — but enough of it has just happened. A brain tumor. Uterine cancer. And now this.
Sorry to dump here, but I just felt the need to vent a bit.
61-69, M
