I just wanted to share some of the side effects that I have experienced. In the last day or so I have read about some of the effects others have had, and while it bothers me to know that people are having to go through this kind of thing, it makes me feel better to know that what I am experiencing is not out of the ordinary for people who have had AVM's.

The vision problems have been the worst. I was told by another member that this is due to the area of the brain in which my hemorrhage was located. My hemorrhage occurred in the left occipital-parietal region of my brain. I do not know the exact size, but while in UT Hospital I was told that I had two "large" AVM's. My neurologist, Dr. Robert J. Singer of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, advised that this was incorrect and that I actually only had one AVM (thankfully).

1. Jerky vision. Later of the evenings, particularly when I have been straining my eyes, my vision gets jerky or jumpy, like my eye is moving swiftly from side-to-side.

2. I have no, or had no, peripheral vision in my right eye. I may be crazy, but it seems like this has been improving over the last week or so.

3. Difficulties reading, writing, and typing. Immediately after the hemorrhage I could barely read or write. Now when I read I have troubles with being able to read the words completely across the page. I sometimes read fine for a few lines and then my eyes just sort of lose their place and pick up somewhere else. For a long time I could not write in a straight line and no matter how hard I tried my writing would slope downwards, or be drastically above or below the line I was trying to follow while writing. I could not type at all and it took me months to re-learn how to type.

4. Things would seem strangely large when I looked at them. I noticed this when in the hospital gift shop. I was looking at a baseball and I could bot believe how huge the thing looked. This happened intermittently for months, and then it just stopped.

5. I now stutter sometimes. I cannot remember words when I need them. Sometimes I cannot say them even if I can remember them. I used to be an avid reader and writer. My vocabulary is considerably diminished, although sometimes I do better then others. I have trouble speaking sentences sometimes, like my mouth cannot keep up with my brain when I speak. This has always happened to me, but now it is worse and I often I end up speaking big long streams of gibberish that don't even faintly resemble words at times.

6. I have a lot of difficulty with numbers now. I can usually handle addition and subtraction as long as it is simple, but I have a ton of trouble with long division. One day I did a simple division problem and then tried to redo it to check my answer. Although I had just done the same problem and had the problem worked out right in front of me, I could not for the life of me figure out how I had done it.

7. I sometimes substitute letters for similar letters. I frequently replace p's with b's or d's, etc. This seems to have gotten a little better, though.

8. Sometimes I substitute letters for numbers, or vice versa. I spent 20 minutes one day trying to figure out who to write 1,000. I knew that their were four digits, but for some reason I was trying to write it out with four letters. I gave up and finally realized a day or so later what the problem had been.

9. I experienced a recurrence of some of the issues I was having before my hemorrhage. This really scared me, so I googled it (which is actually how I found you guys). In the weeks before the hemorrhage I started having an issue with my right eye (the corresponding side to the hemorrhage). The only way that I know how to explain it is to say that it, to me, is like looking into a piece of crystal and seeing the light refracted. This has NOT happened to me even once since my brain hemorrhaged.

10. Yesterday I also experienced that extreme confusion I had immediately following the hemorrhage. My mind just went blank. I was right in the middle of talking to my mother and I just lost everything that I had been trying to say. I had no idea how to say what I had intended to say. The only other time this happened was, like I said, when I had the actual hemorrhage.

These last two issue are particularly bothersome to me because, like I said, these things have not happened to me since before I had the hemorrhage. My bleed happened on 12/29/2010, over a year ago. Honestly, I was terrified when it happened and I am still very concerned. I have read that these things can come back. My AVM was surgically removed, so I do not know if it will come back or not. Has anyone had anything like this happen? Symptoms disappear after the bleed and then suddenly happen again after a long time? I have a son now and he is almost 9 months old. I am so afraid that something will happen to me, and that I will not be able to be there for my son. Any information that anyone can give me would be amazing. Thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any help anyone can give me.