Catherine,
For once in your life, you need to come first. When you go in, you are on holiday. Not working. And you just go through the processes with the hospital. Iām a complete wuss and actually, I got through it fine. It was so fine, I had no concern about having to have a return trip. It was unpleasant, as Iāve described elsewhere, but really very copable-with.
I really think a catheter embolisation is the least invasive way of doing any kind of surgery. Itās brilliant as a concept. āEndovascular sectionā Iām assuming is the same thing.
My wife, if she finds she has some illness on a Friday, will worry herself completely all the way through the weekend until she can get an appointment early the next week. I think itās fair to say every time sheās done that, whatever the concern was is dismissed by the doctor, or turns out to be something trivial, easy to fix, rather than the nightmare scenario sheās tortured herself for half a week about. I now consistently tell her, āyou canāt worry about that until you walk into the doctorās officeā. Thereās nothing to be gained by it.
Soā¦ do the prep you need to do but otherwise, distract yourself with normal life, keep busy and tell yourself that there is no benefit in worrying about it before the morning in question. I can help myself this way and I hope you can, too.
When you get out, it could be you feel 100% within a couple of days. @berlin112 had a great experience recently with his embolisation but quite possibly you will need to take it easy, maybe really careful after your op. But you deserve it, OK? Itās important, so value yourself enough to allow it. I suspect the reason many of us discover our AVMs is that as a community, we are the people who do too much and itās the extra stress we carry, the higher blood pressure that helps to push our AVM to the fore, that it starts to have effects we notice.
I hope this is constructive, a bit nagging, but meant in a positive supporting way. Because you are worth it!
For the record, although I have days when my head feels good and other days when it feels odd, it isnāt stopping me do stuff and I definitely feel better than I did in April, May or even at the beginning of August. Iām definitely getting better. I took 3 weeks off ā some as sick, one week as holiday ā and Iāve had only one half day off since that time off due to not feeling well, and that was because I seriously overdid life the day before.
Youāre on the glide path in. Nothing to worry about before touch-down.
Thinking of you.
Richard