The anatomy of an AVM #2
Posted by Kathy on Feb 08, 2004 at 14:17
(211.29.136.11)Re: The anatomy of an AVM (Amaranth Rose)
He adapted well as a pretty boy but with a volatile temper, and could never understand why I insisted on doing it "the hard way". Would theft things for me and I would have to refuse them, which bewildered him.
At 19, while incarcerated, he suffered a seizure. Alas, for the first time, someone examined INSIDE his head. His problems were not the result of single parenting, working parents, poor training, drugs nor diet, but the absence of a left frontal lobe and an AVM so expanded as to take up approximately 1/3 of the cavity where his brain should have been. The seizures started coming more frequently, and severe, until his Psychiatrist, Dr John Ellard, whom had been giving him Dexedrine to control his hyperactivity, being on the Board of the Royal North Shore Hospital, felt obliged to navigate surgery - since the medication was causing small bleeds, hence seizures. Up to that point no one would touch him, because the abnormality emanated from the base brain stem, however to do nothing meant up to six months and with constant stroke-induced seizures, up to 7 daily. Sometimes he couldn't get up off the floor (remain incoherent for some time after, then another would come on and last up to 10 minutes). Needless to say medications for the seizures didn't work either, as were strokes, not epilepsy.