What Is An AVM?

What is an AVM? An arteriovenous malformation can happen anywhere in the body, but most of them happen in the brain or the spine. These AVM's affect less than 1% of the population, making them rare. The AVM disrupts the arteries and veins and entangles them into a big cluster. They rarely know a lot about them, except for they are formed during fetal development (for the most part). Most people with brain AVM’s experience symptoms such as headaches or seizures, or they'll experience paralysis on one side.

In brain AVM’s, hemorrhage or bleeding in the brain is typically the first sign. That's around 50% of people who have a hemorrhage as the first sign. The signs or symptoms are…

• Seizures

• Headache or pain in one area of the head

• Muscle weakness or numbness in one part of the body

• Severe headache

• Weakness, numbness or paralysis

• Vision loss

• Difficulty speaking

• Confusion or inability to understand others

• Severe unsteadiness

I personally had a severe headache, my right side was completely numb, and I had chills without a fever. It came on so quickly. We were at Verde Valley School’s graduation, I was walking around setting things up, and boom. I wasn't well. I could tell that there was something seriously wrong.

MRIs, CT scans, and angiograms are all used to diagnose AVM’s. I had all 3! Multiple times! Then I had a Craniotomy, which is just a cooler way of saying brain surgery. I don't know how long I was in there for, but I'm guessing 6 to 8 hours. There's so much prep before and after so I really don't know how long the surgery was. About six to eight weeks after the surgery, I had Gamma Knife. This is when they drill four holes into your skull, so that you stay really, really still and zap you with a tiny laser of radiation. They

zapped me for about 2 hours. But I fell asleep so it's really relaxing! Before the Gamma Knife, they took out around 75% of my AVM. Now the Gamma Knife is supposed to cause scaring and die-off of the active arteries and veins within my AVM in my Thalmus, but it's going to take some time, about 2 years. Then, hopefully, I will be AVM-free!

This is the Gamma Knife!