I had gamma knife two and a half years ago and everything is normal. Tinnitus and the occasional balance problems are normal aren't they?
I'm writing because of another difficulty that I had about seven days after the gamma knife. I had this bad headache. It was one of those lie -on-the-floor-hold-your-temples kind of headache that I thought just might kill me. The pain faded away after a minute or two and I was able to resume normal functions. I saw my GK neurosurgeon three days later as a follow up to the radiation and I mentioned the headache. He said,"I've done hundreds of AN radiation procedures and I've never had anyone mention such a reaction. Sounds like you had some sort of hemorrhage."
He sent me off for an MRA (just as much fun as an MRI, but this one is concerned with blood vessels rather than tumors). Several hours later I was in the hospital because the MRA had shown a brain aneurysm. If size matters for you, it was 5mm.
Much like the AN, I had two choices, this time it was between surgery or "coils." The coils procedure, at least in my case, involved a tube being inserted in the groin and sent up to the carotid artery and into my head to the aneurysm site. The aneurysm is a bubble in the artery wall and the wall of the bubble is weaker than the rest of the artery so titanium coils are pushed up the tube and inserted into the bubble. The coil attaches itself to the thin sides of the bubble and -- if all goes well -- stays there to line and protect the walls.
When your blood pressure goes up -- and my aneurysm neurosurgeon said most aneurysms burst during either a bowel movement or sex -- the blood pounds along the arteries and veins, normally doing no damage unless the walls of the vessel are weak -- like in an aneurysm. The coils are there for protection.
The "gold standard" -- as I was told -- is surgery -- cut the head open, put a clip on the bubble to seal it off, and sew it back up again. But that wasn't so appealing so I went with the coils. It had to be a much quicker decision than with the AN though, aneurysms are treated as though there's no time to waste.
Unfortunately, the procedure didn't go well. My aneurysm was heart shaped: two bubbles instead of one, and it had a wide neck (the area where the artery wall starts to bulge out of place) and the neck required a stent (piece of mash) to keep the coils from falling out. So the doc put a stent over the neck and then pushed the tube through the mesh and inserted a coil. He put two coils in the first bubble and a single coil in the other bubble. He told me later he thought he would "get cute" and put in a fourth coil. He put the fourth in and as he was removing the tube he accidentally pulled the stent out of place and it floated into the artery. As it happened the stent got stuck on the artery wall, it's still there today. While that was happening, three of the coils also broke free and went sailing off into the bloodstream. This is not a good thing, a stroke is one of the potential problems arising at this point. The doc, however was able to catch the errant coils and extract them back down the tube and out of my body. The fourth coil stayed where it was. Then they woke me up to find out if I still had all my faculties. I did.
A few weeks later I was back for a repeat procedure, this time with a different neurosurgeon. This guy was the best available. I know because he told me. He had more luck than doc number one, this latest guy was able to get the right amount of coils in place to remedy the problem by "95%."
Ninety-five percent however, is not ideal for an aneurysm so, a few weeks later, I went back for procedure number three. Despite about four hours of valiant effort by the team of four doctors, they couldn't get another coil in to plug the aneurysm so they sent me home and that's where we are today, two years later.
You can probably understand why I call myself the head case.
Be well,
Bob
