On Sept 22, I went to a radiology lab in Seattle Northgate for my MRI.
A couple of years ago, I had to get a MRI done for my tennis elbow surgery and to my surprise, I panicked 5 minutes into my scan and they had to pull me out and stop the scan. I just wasn't mentally prepared to be shoved inside a small and extremely noisy tunnel with the roof exactly 2 inches above my nose. I got through it eventually a week later.
So this time around, I was well prepared for it and I had already called to confirm that I was going to be put in one of the newer machines with more than a feet of roof clearance.
MRI took about 25 minutes. And then the nurse came inside to prep me for MRA (Magnetic Resonance Angiogram). She did an IV in my left arm with a Contrast Material that quickly worked its way up to my arteries and veins in the brain. MRA can give more details than a regular MRI, especially about the blood flow and the sizes of the vascular walls.
Any way, I was done in about 40 minutes total and I headed back to my office.
The next day, I got a call from my eye doctor around 9:30 AM. I couldn't pick it up since I was in a meeting. An hour later, I noticed there was another missed call from her and a voice mail asking me to call her back. 2 calls in an hour? You know this was not going to be a routine call from a doctor saying everything looks normal. I was very eager at this point, but I had back to back meetings the entire morning.
I got a few free minutes after 1 PM and I called her office. She came to the point right away, and said "the scan has uncovered an anomaly called AVM in your brain. You should go see a neurosurgeon soon". Until that moment, AVM meant only one thing to me - a venerable movie studio back in India that released some of my favorite childhood movies. I didn't have any idea what this AVM was all about, but knew this one wasn't going to be as much fun and cool.
I tried to ask my eye doctor what the finding meant, but she encouraged me to talk to a neurosurgeon soon and referred me to one at the Swedish Hospital.
I hunkered down in a conference room with my laptop and reached out to the only person I wanted to talk then. No, not my wife or parents or brothers or close friends. It was Google. I typed in 'brain AVM' in the search box and so started my 30 hours of research in the next couple of days on this topic.
After my initial research, I realized AVM meant business. I called the neurosurgeon's office right away and set up an appt. for Friday Sept 26.
After a lot of research that night, I realized this may be nothing or it could be a life changing event. Either way, I wanted to document and share what I was going through. I decided to start this blog. I also decided to wait until after my visit with the neurosurgeon to let my family know about this. I shuttle between my work in Seattle, and home in Virginia every few weeks. And I wanted to understand the issue and the prognosis better before I drag my wife into this mess.
