My mom’s avm (right temporal lobe) ruptured this summer and now her doctor recommends a partial embolization. Her main concern is how she will feel post embolization. When she had the emergency craniotomy to drain the blood from the rupture she felt nauseus for about two months. She finally feels like herself again and was wondering if nausea typically follows embolization? What about headaches? How long do these symptoms (or any other symptoms) last?
Any insights/personal stories would be great. Thanks.
Of course every patient and procedure will likely result in some different after effects. Chari had about 4 embos (lost track, sorry) and surgery to correct an aneurysm.
Recovery from the embos was much easier than the aneurysm surgery. Initially, I recall she had some headaches, but those might have been caused by all the activity or the embo itself–hard to guess. She mentioned more pain in the area where they inserted the embo tools–pain from having a wound. The embos reduced and later eliminated her bruit (the blood rushing through the AVM sound the person hears)–that bothered her as it was a sound she recalls all her life–she literally had issues getting to sleep as her bruit would sooth her to sleep at night. She’s over that now!
For her, and this would depend on where the AVM is, she suffered from foot drop following one embo. That caused her a lot of issues until she had surgery on the ankle to correct that about 8 years later.
Hi Jane every person is different as to how the after effects go, but i hope it goes well for your mum. I had my 1st embo in Feb 09 and after waking up from the Genereal Anesthetic had a big headache and a lot of nausea but this passed after a few days, the main side effect i had was my hair falling out after a week on the side they were focusing on my head. this is due to the radiation from the x-ray road map machine they use. but my hair did grow back after 2 months but it was an inital shock.
I had two embo’s for a left parietal lobe AVM. One embo in Dec 08, then another in Jan 09. I had some headaches the first few days after the procedures and then no other side effects.