Angiogram/Embolization

We arrived here at Children's at about 6:30 this morning. Again, we started in the new Whale wing, where we waited for about 10 minutes to go through the registration process. After that, they sent us across the atrium to the surgery reception area. Again, we waited about 15 minutes until they called Max. We saw one of the doctors (Dr. Tim... Lucas), but without his glasses, I didn't recognize him right off. Once we got into the exam room, Max got into his gown and slippers and we waited to meet the anesthesiologist.

Today's anesthesilogist hails from somewhere in England (likely London) and is of Indian descent, I would presume. Matt and I really liked her. She introduced herself and we didn't catch her full name, but she goes by "Prenny". She asked Max more questions about his experiences with anesthesia and was impressed that he didn't even have any anti-nausea medication last time. After another few minutes, Dr. Kott came in (again, we almost didn't recognize him without his scrubs) and he told us a little more about today's procedure.

Apparently, they are doing the embolization today in the hopes that once they do it, they may not have to do surgery. However, Matt's and my feeling is, since surgery has already been scheduled, they likely will still be doing it. The fluid they inject is called Onyx (because it's black) and there are some risks as they do this, as they are adding a liquid into the cranial area, but the overall risk is relatively small, and an even smaller percentage here in this hospital. The AVM is sitting just above the visual cortex, so perhaps the blind spot Max has will improve once this is all over, but again ... it's all speculation.

At about 8:15 Prenny walked us over to the same place we were last time for the angiogram and we hugged and kissed Max good-bye. He will be under for about 3 hours and then will deliver him to ICU where we will be for the next 24 hours or so.

Matt and I checked in at ICU and got our pager. They typically page us for an update after about 2 hours, so we went and got breakfast at the cafeteria and are now hanging out in the Family Resource Center until we hear news. I will post another update when we know more.