Hello, I am David from Sevilla (Spain), I am 34 and last August 2016 I have my AVM ruptured and a bleed into my brain.
I was in a little town near Granada (Spain) for vacations with my wife and little baby. It was around 8pm and after taking a shower I felt down to the floor, that was very weird because it has never happened something to me like that before. So I got to my bedroom and I started to get dressed for the dinner. I remembered laying down on my bed because I was having a headache and that’s all, the next night was me waking up at the ICU and my wife and my father were holding my hands and told me that I had a stroke and I was at the hospital.
I was very lucky because in a couple of hours from that moment I was at the hospital and I had my first surgery, a craniotomy, to control my bleeding and pressure in my brain. I stayed like three days at the ICU and when I started to wake up doctors were asking me to rise my arms, legs, and I did not why they asked me that “easy” things. I spent about a week at the hospital while the doctors were studying my AVM and they told me that I the best option for me was surgery in order to complete removal of the AVM (frontal right lobe ranked #2).
So I decided to have surgery (embolization and craniotomy) to remove my AVM and everything went ok, I have no deficits and I stayed for 10 days more at the hospital after the surgery. The first month I was very tired, no headaches at all. I started to taking walks around my home, every day a little longer. In about three months I felt that my energy was coming back. I returned to work (part-time) and drive in five months.
At the moment I do not play any sports, contact or non-contact; I just walk and somedays I go to the gym for cycling and running a little bit. I still taking anti-seizures pills until my next visit to the doctor on June 2017.