@Elika
Welcome! There are a bunch of us here who know exactly how you feel! @Sophia has had an embolization a couple of weeks ago and is trying to come to terms with how life looks just now but I promise you you’re just on the journey to getting better: it takes much longer than any of us would believe.
I was in much the same position as you in spring 2017. I had an embolization for a DAVF at the beginning of April. The doc suggested he might take two attempts at it to get it 100% but then reported back after no 1 that he’d already done it 100%. I struggled to believe him.
I had a repeat angiogram at about 8 weeks post op and again he declared that all looked good. I half believed him but I half didn’t. I went back to normal life but in reality I felt less well than I expected.
The blurs in your vision might be scotomas. These are usually effects of migraine. In my case, I got a small frosted-glass teardrop shape that would randomly appear just off centre of my vision in both eyes. It would grow into a large C shape, with “teeth” in the C. It would carry on growing to cover my vision for a few minutes before resolving. Overall, a scotoma typically resolves in something like 10-20 minutes. Does this sound like what you’re experiencing?
Between me and a doctor, we decided that it was irritation of my brain caused by the contrast material. I had bouts of it over several weeks after both the embolization and the repeat angiogram. The bouts got less frequent until presumably the contrast material had cleared out fully. You might have it from any kind of irritation or scarring or changes in your brain. Aura are not in themselves anything to worry about. Your operation was to address your stoke risk, not deal with migraine at all.
I found post op that I had all sorts of weird sensations that worried me. Principally, I used to be dizzy from my DAVF and post op, I still got smaller dizzinesses and weirdnesses that I felt I was not progressing. About 6 months post op I had a more serious bout of dizziness and felt that perhaps things were not going the right way. It took me a further year to get back to hospital, to have a consult, further scans and then have them reported on and still the answer was “There’s nothing physiologically amiss: I can’t see anything on the scans.” My doc suggested I just needed to continue to get used to having the right pressures in the right places after having odd pressures in a number of places driven by the DAVF.
I resolved to believe him and to ignore any small things that were still happening from time to time. I decided that I was probably being a bit hypervigilant: I think it’s a natural thing to get a bit hypervigilant with something like this: and that actually I needed to look forwards rather than back.
It took me 1½-2 years post op to get back into that mindset but I feel it worked. I ignored the little stuff, I stopped listening for odd sounds and I moved on. I’m still here, actually perfectly relaxed about my DAVF, 9½ years post op. The last 7+ years have been great: I have resumed normal life.
It’s great that you found us. Hopefully others will also share their experience and encourage you that you’re doing well.
Very best wishes,
Richard
) Despite the bleeds, I am still where I want to be. The path was harder than I had foreseen, and I am still scared about having kids one day, but I hope I can overcome that fear too.