So my embolization was under general – I expect yours will be, too. So there’s nothing to tell you of the procedure itself other than it is identical apart from the placement of glue or coils or other “embolic material”. You’ll have contrast used again to illuminate what is where on x-ray.
When I went in, I hung around a lot of the day as others were seen before me. I got changed into the obligatory gown and pants and eventually got wheeled down to x-ray. Again, I waited there for an hour or so while someone else was being seen and finally got wheeled into theatre. We had a chat and I got the countdown into sleep and that was it.
I woke up several hours later in recovery and came to gently. The main things I remember were very sore testicles, a very dry mouth, bad tasting mouth and the nurses telling me “someone’s had an embolization: it smells like bubblegum in here!” I’m sure I had a sore head – perhaps thick like having had lots to drink – but I was coming round from general, so there was pain relief going on.
I met my wife and then got wheeled off to neuro ICU for the night. In ICU, principally the drugs were wearing off, so I was given oramorph to deal with the headache but while I obviously had a headache, I don’t remember it being awful, you know. It was ameliorated by the oramorph and it was all perfectly doable. The main thing I got from looking around in neuro ICU was to see people who had had different operations from me – I remember one person opposite me who had had a craniotomy with no replacement of the bone flap and in the same way as in the My Amazing Brain documentary, a massive concave depression in his head: he was definitely unwell and I concluded overall that I was the healthiest patient in the room.
I needed some things to drink: my mouth was very dry and the solvent from the glue tasted nothing like bubblegum. It was unpleasant but perfectly doable. I stayed in neuro ICU overnight.
The following day I moved to the neuro ward and stayed another night. My consultant came to tell me he was convinced he had embolized the DAVF in one sitting “I used lots of glue!” And therefore he didn’t feel a second embolization would be likely to be needed. Originally, he had warned me that he might need to take two approaches to it.
The pain drugs are great. They really do keep you nice and comfortable.
I lay flat for about two days, I think. The team came to shine a light in my eyes regularly through the day and night, looking for signs of oedema. It was all about pain management and making sure there was no swelling going on, no significant irritation from the contrast material or the glue, or a bleed happening.
Then I went home and switched to paracetamol/ Tylenol. I stayed off work for three weeks overall – the longest “holiday” I’ve had since the school holidays of my youth! I’m sure the paracetamol was needed through at least two of those three weeks. Even as I went back to work, I ended up taking paracetamol from time to time. I found raising my head at an angle set me back on one occasion in particular and I resorted back to the drugs briefly but the whole thing was eminently gettable throughable.
I didn’t have a bleed: there’s a much harder route back if you have a bleed somewhere along the way but we can see many people in this forum have fought their way back to health after a bleed, so there’s good confidence we can draw that we could get through that if we needed to.
Here is the detail of how I felt post op:
Carry on asking anything you need.
Lots of love,
Richard