It helps to work at a hospital.

[Steve]

I had no idea what an AVM was. I have always been an avid walker. I work at a major medical facility in Minnesota. I am an IT person. I am in my 50s. Back in 2006/2007 I started noticing a sharp pain in my lower back especially when I was walking. As time went on I would have to start stopping to rest on my normal walking route. Things progressively got worse. I had to start parking closer and closer to work. Even with a shorter walk I would get to work covered with perspiration and badly out of breath. One of my legs I was dragging and I was very unsteady and experiencing falls. I knew I had a hernia and thought naively that somehow that could explain some of my symptoms. After surgery for the hernia my surgeon suggested that I see a neurologist. After countless MRIs and angiograms they found the avm at t5/t6. By this time I could barely walk. It was either surgery or a wheelchair, they explained. Even though the surgery carried a smallish mortality risk, the decision was easy for me. They opened up an area about 7-8 inches between the shoulder blades and broke the vertebra to be able to cut off and cauterize the avm. It took five weeks before I RETURNED TO WORK. It has been 11 months since the surgery and the bruising in the spine went down from about 11 inches to about 3 inches now. I now walk much better but still have a lot of weakness in one of my legs. I still battle with constipation which had previously never been an issue. I still have spasticity problems and sometimes have body jerks that almost eject me off the bed. I have had a couple of bad incidents with medicines (not related to avm) so I am going against the considerable pain alone. I pretty much have to crash after work every day as I struggle to find energy but I am happy to be able to walk!