Jacqueline F.
I am a 41 year old female that has been morbidly obese for the last 20 years. When I developed a spontanious spinal fluid leak in June 2008. It made me extremely ill and it took a while to diagnose. I ended up being told I needed to see a neurologist, and the neurologist here in Flagstaff was on vacation for a month, after being seen a FMC multiple times I ended up seeing the nearest neurologist in Prescott. He hospitalized me in Prescott and told me I had menengitis...which was an incorrect diagnosis, and after a week of every test under the sun being run on me to no avail he sent me to Barrows Neurological / St. Josephs in Phx.
I was again hospitalized for a week and after determining that my spinal fluid pressure was very low, they did a blood patch above my spine in hopes of clotting whatever was leaking...it was amazing, within seconds of the proceedure I felt great...got out of the hospital and went back to work the next day. By the end of that week I was miserably sick again along with some additional neurological issues ie: memory loss, balance, hearing and vision changes. So they thought I had another leak...tried a blood patch again and nothing.
They started comparing the scans from before the first proceedure and the second proceedure and determined that I had developed a blood clot in my brain. Six months of blood thinners and other medications later no changes...since the clot was stable they opted to treat my symptoms and leave the clot alone...nothing seemed to work and after several months of trying, many hospitalizations in phx and me finally getting tired of having had a headache for over a year they decided to remove the clot and put a stent in my head. Well they could not safely remove the clot so they put three stents over the top of it. They did that Aug 20, 2009. They had to do the surgery laproscopically by going up through my femoral artery up through my heart into my brain.
When they unplugged the dam in my head, it seemed to cause a plethura of other problems...Since the surgery I developed hypoactive thyroid, high blood pressure and pulmonary hypertension. I came back to Flagstaff and ended up in the cardiac wing at FMC with congestive heart failure for another week until my heart rate stopped dropping down to 28 and low 30s. So now all of that has been or is being treated, I still have to sleep with oxygen and sometimes I still need oxygen during the day.
The headaches have changed...I seem to have a couple of days a week where I don't have a headache at all and when I do get them they seem to only be on the right side of my head and behind my left eye... they still get pretty severe, and I am still having memory lapses and balance problems intermittently. So I just went in Saturday to have my head scanned again so they can determine if I have developed another clot. Which is possible as one of the things they also discovered is that I have a genetic blood clotting disorder called factor five leiden..meaning .I clot too easily...so I live on daily doses of plavix and asprin among other medications.
I bruise very easily because of the anti-coagulants so I look frequently like someone has beat the tar out of me, and of course you know how clutzy I am...I dropped a shampoo bottle on my foot in the bathroom and bruised the whole top of my foot, stubbed my toe on a chair leg and looked like I had broke three of my toes by the time it quit throbbing...bumped a wall with my arm..oh yeah that one was pretty...made the mistake of clapping during the football game and bruised my finger...bumped a box at my best friend Lisa's house and got a horrible bruise on the side of my leg...yeah the bruising part is very frustrating...lol
I also started getting sick and having major abdominal pain and they determined that I have a gall bladder that is failing so I have to have it removed sometime in the near future... but because I have to have bariatric surgery they were waiting to do both at the same time.
So needless to say that my health sucks and I am doing everything I can to get that corrected...It all sounds pretty daunting but I have a great support system so I don't get down very often and definately not for very long.
It is difficult to plan things because from day to day my health and ability to accomplish things changes. It is funny because some days I need oxygen and / or a walking cane for balance just to get around and others I don't need either one.
I also have to have the same brain surgery again, but this time it is just to check the pressures in my brain they will not be putting any more stents in place. We will probably do that a couple of months after the Roux-en-Y / Gall bladder surgery. At any rate my Roux-en-Y / Gall bladder surgery is scheduled for February 8, 2010.
I am quite excited about the idea of being able to move better and enjoy my family more. I am a bit scared because of the high risk considering my health history, but it is either this or die a slow miserable death. I chose to live a long happy one.
