I thought I was dying

[Steve]

I just thought my swimsuit top was tied too tightly giving me the feeling of a stiff neck. I told my friend if I loosened it any more, we might need to send the kids in the house. My head had begun to pound as well so I decided I should go lay down a while. I went to lay down on the bed of my friend's daughter and all the while, the most unbelievable feeling of nausea was overcoming me, my face was feeling tingley and I couldn't feel my nose. :/ My friend came in to check on me and I told her that I wanted to get out of her daughter's bed because I was afraid I was going to die and I didn't want to do it there.

I had a history of neck problems so we just called my husband to take me home. Later that night, he told me that it was probably nothing that an adjustment from the chiropractor wouldn't fix. I replied that there was no way I was letting my neck be touched. We finally ended up calling an ambulance when I felt myself getting violent from the pain.

Arriving in the emergency room screaming and holding one's head tends to earn prompt service. My FIRST spinal tap was administered fairly quickly and it showed blood in the CSF. The emergency room doctor decided it was probably just a traumatic tap and ordered another... and another... and another. The radiologist didn't really know what to make of my initial CT scan. They all kept looking in my head while I was telling them to look at my neck. Well, after I kid you not, 17 spinal taps (the radiologist that kept doing my taps finally was apologizing to me...)the doctors finally agreed that I had much more than a migraine. I had a large buldge in my cervical spine and emergency surgery was necessary. Thank goodness, something was finally found for I had basically lost conciousness which was sweet relief because if there was worse pain, I could not imagine it.

I was taken to surgery where a 6cm clump was found resting on my spinal cord. The doctor performed a laminectomy of C2-C6 to remove the mass and afterwords went out to tell my mother that he had no idea what he had just taken out. He thought it was possibly lymphoma but would later find out that it was an AVM. I was sent off to ICU for almost a week.

After discovering that it was an AVM, more tests were done to search for other possible involvement and another one was found in my thoracic spine. The neurosurgeon that did my surgery removed himself from my case because he felt it was out of his league and sent me to Houston. After further studies, it was decided that an embolization would be a good idea to prevent further bleeding.

I go in for MRI's every year to watch for any residual AVM's that might rear their ugly heads. I could never imagine that my head could hurt so bad or that I would literally pray to die to be released from such pain.