Folks - it's great to be alive in 2007!

My Sweet Patootie had herself a brain aneurism (bubble on the wall of an
artery leaking) about a month ago.

Wednesday evening she got an intense headache and fainted.  Dizziness,
nausea, vomiting, lack of muscle  control, fainting, weakness and tingling /
numbness were her  symptoms.  Looking back - she had a nasty headache and
very painful neck for a few days before Wednesday.

We called the ambulance and the house filled up with  relatives and friends-
we're in volunteer fire department turf, and the ambulance is also
associated  with the fire department.    Probably 15 people showed  up!

The Hospital in Titusville is small (Think Hooterville from Green Acres) ,
but they do have a CT scanner, and  the smarts to call a helicopter when
they spot blood  in the ventricles of the brain.

She was off to Hamot Med center in Erie. They spent a  day looking at her
and doing cat scans and angiograms  and deciding what to do with the
aneurism they found.

Least invasive choice, given her condition was to fly  her to UPMC in
Pittsburgh.  Once there they did the same diagnostics, then performed a deal
where  they  inserted a catheter into a leg artery, and  worked it up into
her brain.  They inserted small platinum / Titanium coils into the aneurism,
allowing blood to clot and fill the little bubble.  This sealed it off,
permanently.

Bad things happen inside the head when blood is in the  cerebral fluid.  I
have details if you want them.  Suffice it to say that they ususally keep
people in Neuro ICU for at least a week after something like  this.  The
best thing that can happen is a killer headache  for 2 weeks and they don't
like to give effective pain  medication because that might mask symptoms of
the bad  things happening.

Worst that can happen is a stroke as the body tries to clean up all the
blood from the cerebral fluid.

All along - she was on the high side of what  condition she could be in.

No "stroke" symptoms- like paralysis or loss of vision  or speech or one
side of body wrong or any of those  problems.

She appears to have full brain and body use.  No  memory loss that we can
find.  Same great attitude.

3 weeks in hospitals - 2 helicopter rides, A catheter in the leg snaked all
the way up into the brain and into an aneurism and tiny metal coils
inserted!

Man it's great to be alive in 2007!

Mark (got me a Gratitude Attitude) Dunning