
Aneurysm - Vigier
http://lithub.com/aneursym/
======
gregpilling
My son had surgery for 3 aneurysms 5 years ago. At 8am he was a normal 6 year
old boy, going with his mom to LA Fitness. Then at 8:30 I got a call that he
couldn't get up off the floor. An MRI showed 3 golf ball sized aneurysms, and
they put him in a helicopter from Tucson to Phoenix, about 100 miles apart. I
was pretty crippled by fibromyalgia at the time, my wife was 7 months
pregnant, and they wouldn't let us fly with him. We cried driving two hours to
learn if our kid lived or not.

They used superglue to plug the fistula at Barrow's in Phoenix Arizona, they
went up through the leg.
[http://www.thebarrow.org/index.htm](http://www.thebarrow.org/index.htm)
Amazingly, he was walking again within 4 days and home within 7 days. I have a
friend that had the same surgery 5 years before; she was there for months
recovering from the clip method.

My son was ok for 4 1/2 years, but for unknown reasons he had another brain
issue in December that caused temporary paralysis for a few hours. They went
spelunking again and found nothing. They did decide that the 5 year old repair
had healed perfectly. Dr. Cameron McDougall the surgeon was just beaming with
happiness when he told us that.

My kid is doing well, he is pretty smart. He attends the hardest charter
school in Arizona, BASIS. He is 11 years old, and I am his angel investor
(Total investment about $500) in his website
[http://legimon.com](http://legimon.com) which is his version of Pokemon.
Total revenue so far is $282.00 and about $40 in profit for some t-shirts. He
was quite amazed when I told him how long he would have to scrub toilets at
McDonalds to make that much money. We then had an hour long discussion about
trademark law; he knew more than I did. He has been doing all the wordpress
and photoshop work lately, and he works about 3 hours a day on it, everyday
for the last three years. He has developed 400 characters and tells me that he
is not stopping until he passes Pokemon's 700+.. He has planned out the app,
the Xbox game, the VR headset upgrade for gokart racing, and the theme park. I
couldn't be more proud of him.

I keep a photo of him in the hospital taken right after they used a cordless
drill to put a hole in his skull. He looks like corpse, his head is half
shaved, his spine is twisted sideways and the drain from his skull is a bright
orange. I use it when I am having a bad day at work, as a reminder of what a
bad day really is.

Ask me anything.

~~~
kayoone
I don't have anything to ask, just wanted to say that this is an amazing
story. Can't imagine going through that with a kid of mine and him doing so
well now makes me happy for you guys! All the best to you and your family.

~~~
gregpilling
People have asked me "How were you so strong" which is flattering but not
true. The truth is that I had no choice and that I was going along for the
ride. I was not strong, I merely had no choice.

Thanks for your kind words. He does make me appreciate everything else more.

------
wumbernang
Comedy timing for me.

My father was taken into hospital 4 hours ago after collapsing and turns out
he's got a brain bleed. They stuck him in a CT straight away and are now doing
a lumbar puncture to see if there is any blood in the spinal fluid. They don't
know what has precisely happened but they suspect an aneurysm that went
undetected. The mortality rate of this event is 50% in 30 days. He's had a
long history of hypertension and a couple of surgeries to clean out arteries
in his neck.

Not sure why I'm sitting here on HN but it was taking my mind off things. Fail
:(

Anyway, moral of the story: Don't smoke and dint eat piles of shit; it'll get
you one day.

Edit: Ordered the book as well now like an idiot. Scary tale when you're close
to it but I find comfort in knowing things rather than ignorance.

Thanks for posting this.

~~~
plq
God, so sorry to hear that. There's no "Fail :(" here, please don't think like
that. You're just trying to cope with this stuff. It's the most humane thing
to do, and you know what, you need to stay strong for your family and for that
your mind needs such breaks from time to time.

~~~
wumbernang
Thanks for the uplift; appreciated.

------
justifier
" I rarely clip aneurysms now. All the skills that I slowly and painfully
acquired to become an aneurysm surgeon have been rendered obsolete by
technological change.

Although neurosurgery is no longer what it once was, the neurosurgeon’s loss
has been the patient’s gain. "

so nice to read this

many of the entrenched remain so through superstition at the loss of progress,

but to read someone speak highly of a practice that rendered a section of
their skill set obsolete is heartening

i have family who work in trauma and they condescendingly balk at my
excitement over new medical technology:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-H0L3eEo0#t=3m14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA-H0L3eEo0#t=3m14s)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X69_42Mj-g#t=14m17s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X69_42Mj-g#t=14m17s)

personally, i look forward to bones:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Or-
Hx3yqc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02Or-Hx3yqc)

------
mrbill
Just sent this link to a friend of mine who suffered from a full-bleed
aneurysm a few years ago. She was lucky enough to be out in public when it
happened, and got to a hospital in time for surgery (couldn't do the
noninvasive method described in the excerpt).

Two weeks later they sent her home! It was amazing. Doctors told her that
"Fifty percent of people who have one never make it to the hospital, fifty
percent of those never make it home."

She's had some personality changes (to be expected with such a traumatic brain
injury), but nothing horrible, and I'm amazed at modern medical science.

One of the hardest parts (emotionally, for her) was me helping her shave her
head after she got home; they'd had to do part of it anyway for the surgery,
and two weeks in the hospital hadn't done what was left any good as it was
matted and beyond fixing. Shave a bit, let her cry, shave a bit, let her
cry... until it was all done.

------
jacquesm
"All the skills that I slowly and painfully acquired to become an aneurysm
surgeon have been rendered obsolete by technological change. Instead of open
surgery, a catheter and wire is passed through a needle in the patient’s groin
into the femoral artery and fed upwards into the aneurysm by a radiology
doctor–not a neurosurgeon–and the aneurysm is blocked off from the inside
rather than clipped off from the outside."

Wow. That's a most un-expected way of fixing things in the brain!

This subject never ceases to interest me because both my parents have had
aneurysms, my dad died of them (he had three over the course of several
years), my mom recovered (she had one which got clipped exactly as described
in the article), both had paralysis effects, and both were heavy smokers.

Incredible how reading that story affected me, worse than any movie I've ever
watched.

~~~
bhaumik
If you're interested reading more personal encounters like this, I highly
recommend _" When the Air Hits Your Brain"_. It follows the author's journey
from resident to experienced neursurgeon with a wisecrack sense of humor and
greusome detail.

I finished it in premed days when I was looking for an candid story of
becoming a neurosurgen. Definitely kept me fascinated.

*[http://www.amazon.com/When-Air-Hits-Your-Brain/dp/0393330494](http://www.amazon.com/When-Air-Hits-Your-Brain/dp/0393330494)

------
ggreer
If you've read Marsh's _Do No Harm_ and you're interested in more stories like
it, I strongly recommend _When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from
Neurosurgery_ [1]. Its author-surgeon (Frank Vertosick) lacks much of the
compassion shown by Marsh, but the stories cover his failures more than
successes. I find failures and mistakes more interesting, as there are
countless ways in which an operation can go wrong, but only one way it can
succeed. Though sometimes morbid, the cases are always fascinating.

1\. [http://www.amazon.com/When-Air-Hits-Your-Brain-
ebook/dp/B006...](http://www.amazon.com/When-Air-Hits-Your-Brain-
ebook/dp/B006WOFB5C/)

~~~
shenanigoat
Absolutely. That is a fantastic book. I gave a copy to my neurosurgeon as well
(meningioma resection, benign).

------
vinceguidry
I have the book this passage was excerpted from. It is phenomenal. Highly
recommended. One chapter has him visiting a Ukrainian neurosurgery clinic not
long after independence, and somehow getting involved in a titanic
bureaucratic struggle. Utterly fascinating.

~~~
petercooper
Yes, I just want to second how spectacular this book is. Certainly the best
I've read in the past year. Well, I say read, I listened to the audiobook ;-)
(the narrator is amazing so it was very enjoyable). It really opened my eyes
to what it means to be a high flying surgeon and how to deal with both the
psychology and aftereffects of risk taking.

------
shenanigoat
It bugs me so much that the huge font, single word title is a typo.

------
branchless
I felt so nervous reading that I actually felt a little ill.

How people do these jobs I cannot know. Yet somebody has to. Amazing.

------
madaxe_again
Lovely piece, shame whoever posted it can't spell - stonking great big title
reads "aneursym", rather than "aneurysm".

~~~
mVChr
And the URL :/

------
gonzo
They chased stroke the night I was in the ER. CT of head, spinal tap, etc.

Turns out, different kind of aneurysm.

Ascending aortic dissection. Different repair (Dacron tube replaces the first
4" of my aorta.)

------
rudolf0
Very well-written. The suspense was absolutely killing me as well.

~~~
branchless
I nearly crumbled under the opposing pull of reading each word of excellent
prose vs skipping to the end to find the result.

Thank goodness I went into programming and not brain surgery!

~~~
lmitchell
I on the other hand almost just stopped reading - I absolutely hate sad
stories and I was sure it was going to be so sad :( I'm so glad I finished it
though, it was incredible to read and I want to read the rest of the book very
badly now.

------
pgrote
Wonderfully told. Thanks for posting it.

