I had the operation done on the 19th of August 2008. I wasn’t scared because I knew that I had made the right decision, I knew that I had tried every medication on the market and every procedure, nothing helped anymore and the operation was the last thing to try. It was either this or a very dark path for me...
My husband, mother & sister looked at me with painted smiles, they were scared, they wheeled me into theatre were they put me under anesthetic before doing anything for me, they then shaved my head and got me ready for surgery. If I could do this over, I would’ve shaved my head myself before the op, because its not done nicely when a nurse does it for you and you end up with little cuts here and there, and its shaved very untidyly. After about 2 and a half hours they were moving me out the operating room and into ICU, I opened my eyes to see my Surgeon looking at me and I asked him “was it a blood vessel??” He laughed because I’m sure he didn’t even expect me to know where I am or what’s going on & yet I was asking him about surgery already. He spoke to my family while I was in ICU, explained to them that my Trigeminal Nerve was extremely pale in color, white, and yet it’s supposed to be a dark yellow, he said that there was a thick layer of arachnoid (protective tissue) around the nerve, infact it was so thick that it was choking the nerve. He said besides that there was nothing touching the nerve so he removed the arachnoid and scrapped the nerve, so that it’s forced to heal and stitched me back up again.
He said that there hasn’t been another case like this, that there was no record of anything like this even internationally and so basically there were no answers for me, only assumptions.
It was very hard after the op, all the swelling an pain and inflammation in my head from the op made my head feel so heavy that I could hardly move, kept feeling like the stitches were going to pop out and my wound of the op was going to open.
I couldn’t hear properly because of the iodine in my ear from the op, and obviously with my one ear affected my balance was off, so if I tried to stand or walk my whole body would pull to one side, I couldn’t see properly, everything seemed double. Despite all of this I was ok. After the doc discharged me I had to stay in Cape Town for a while because I wasn’t allowed to fly straight away and it was better that I stayed put incase I noticed anything strange and needed my doctor. The surgeon said to me that even if I have a runny nose after MVD I needed to tell him as this could be a result of something going wrong from the op. So it’s of utmost importance that you take note of everything after MVD, no matter how silly it may seem, check it out with your surgeon.
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