As you may recall from my entry from March, the radiologist who screened my head and neck CT ordered by Dr. Williams included a brief note that said: “A tiny/small soft tissue focus is present in the region of the right piriform sinus inferiorly. Absent contrast filling is noted within the transverse and sigmoid dural venous sinuses extending into the proximal internal jugular vein on the right side compatible with thrombosis.”  Now, as we all know (I didn’t until I asked the Doctor, but we’ll just pretend that you already know) a thrombosis is basically a blood clot.  If you’ll remember the rest of the previous post, I had tried to leverage the skeptical nature of my G.P., Dr. Randy Naiker… and it appears that I was successful.

Dr. Naiker had a conversation with Dr. Williams.  Dr. Williams then had one of his vascular contacts review the films… He called this morning and left a message on our answering machine indicating that the concensus is that there is no thrombosis.  He did go on to say something to the effect that it is fairly common (30%) in this type of surgery that a thrombosis of the vein draining the head may occur.  He assured us that we (meaning me) have nothing to worry about.  Everything is as it should be.

November of 2013 proves that the analysis in this previous paragraph turns out to be wrong.  I suffered a stroke on November 5, 2013 as a result of a DAVF letting go.  what’s a DAVF?  Look at the stroke entries in the blog, but essentially it is what this post describes and was intended to find and deal with in advance.