Hi Sara. My name is Kaye. I live in Marathon, FL(in
the keys). I am 47. I don't have an AVM. I have a CA
(cavernous angioma). I was diagnosed Christmas Day.
Actually they thought that it was a tumor. This
happened when my husband and I were visiting my family
in NC. I had a grand mal seizure and was taken by
ambulance to the hospital. They did a CT and it
showed a mass in my left temporpartial lobe. They
refered me to a neurosurgeon in Cape Coral, FL( on the
gulf coast). They put me on dialantin to control the
seizures. I say the neuro a the first week of 1/05.
He did a MRI and said that it was most likely it was a
CA. I was scheduled to have another MRI and MRA in
one month. On 1/10/05 I started getting dizzy and
ended up in the local ER. My dilantin level was almost
nil. They pumped me full of the stuff and kept me
there for 2 days. I saw a local neurologist while
there who ordered another mri and an eeg. While in
the hospital one of the nurses told me about a
neurosurgeon, Dr. Aizik Wolf from Miami, who comes to
Key West once a month. I checked him out on the
internet and found out that he uses the gamma knife.
I saw him a couple of weeks later in Key West. He
looked at my mri and mra and said that I was a good
candidate for the procedure. I really didn't want
open surguery. I don't like being cut on! I went to
Doctor's Hospital in Miami on 2/22/05 and had the
gamma knife. I will say it was an experience! It
didn't really hurt, just a little uncomfortable. I
had a followup mri last week and will see the neuro
next week to see what he says about it. Hopefully the
gamma knife has stoped the bleeding. I seems like it
works better on AVMs than CA. Time will tell!
Sorry I have been so long winded. Hope I have been
helpful.
Take care.
Kaye


--- Sara <saelenn@...> wrote:
> Hi, my name is Sara, and I'm new here. I'm 18, and
> I'm a college
> freshman in Alabama.
>
> I recently found out that I have an AVM in my left
> frontal lobe. It
> started about a year ago when I started having
> random episodes where
> I would pass out cold for several minutes with no
> warning. I went
> to my GP, and the first two times he wasn't
> concerned. I'm
> hypoglycemic, have a heart murmur, and have very low
> blood
> pressure. Both times, my blood sugar levels were at
> the low end of
> normal, and my blood pressure was around 90/60. He
> said it was
> probably just a combination of low blood sugar and
> low blood
> pressure.
>
> But the third time it happened, about a month and a
> half ago, he
> referred me to a neurologist because he was
> concerned that I might
> be having seizures. The EEG came up normal, but they
> found
> something abnormal in the MRI.
>
> Since then, I've had a head CT, a head CT with dye
> contrast, and a
> head angiogram with dye contrast. They found an AVM
> about 1" x 1".
> Tomorrow I go in for lab work and a 3-D CT scan, and
> on May 5th I
> finally see the neurosurgeon.
>
> I'm looking for whatever information anyone can
> share because the
> doctors aren't giving me much information. I got
> more information
> from my psychiatrist than I got from my neurologist.
> I've done a
> good bit of research on the internet, but I hoped
> other people with
> the same experiences could help me out and let me
> know what to
> expect.
>
> Thanks,
> Sara
>
>
>
>

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