Thursday, August 13, 2015

Is Savant Syndrome Proper?


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Savant syndrome can be caused by a brain injury. This is the acquired form.
My brain injury was a stroke. "Stroke" is specifically named in the video.



I got to wondering...just how much of this "savant syndrome" did I already have?



I played the above (Hungarian Rhapsody by Franz Liszt) at my first piano recital. I was 5 years old. I was already hearing the word "prodigy." So congenital or acquired savant syndrome becomes a question. I was in gifted classes growing up. I left high school when I was 16 years old. I had a Bachelor's degree when I was 19.

It was off to work then. Forget school. Real life beckoned. I got my M.A. while working two part-time jobs. I moved and had my first child. It had been full-time work and my children until now.

That stopped when I was hospitalized. I actually decided to use these other skills you see when I got out of the hospital. Namely it was just the memory and ability to learn at that time.

The writing thing that you see now has evolved to this. My writing is due to my ability to learn. So I wonder how much is acquired? It's not even there yet of diagnosing savant syndrome. Medical records still have me as unconscious...and that's a battle! I don't even know if savant syndrome is the proper disorder.

(Just because savant syndrome never occurred so low before, doesn't mean it can't now. Medicine has advanced.)

Saturday, August 1, 2015

AVM Bleed


In 2002 I had an Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM) that bled. This video shows a simple AVM and repair.



A second bleed would kill me. Most would have died from that first bleed.

The AVM was removed in 2004 in a risky surgery that only a private university would do. I had to sign many papers. The place couldn't be sued if I died.

Obviously, I survived.
 
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This is where a government error lies. The surgery wasn't in their parameters. So it didn't exist and never occurred.

The way they had it figured, a second bleed would kill me. Family was told I "wouldn't make it to 40." (I'm 45 as of this writing.)

No AVM meant there was nothing to bleed. An early death should have been erased. If case management was done, this would have been taken care of. Instead an error was carried forward.

Now it's a miracle I'm still alive. (This is erroneous thinking.)
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Give that university, Stanford, credit for the skill of it's doctors. The process wasn't easy. It took over a month. There was no magic.

The video shows a procedure called 'embolization.' I had a few at Stanford before the AVM was removed. This video is simple. It is done one time and is represented by the blue line going up the woman's body. It then shoots a substance, glue in my case, into feeder blood vessels of the AVM. I had brain surgery through an incision in my leg; amazing!

My AVM was eventually removed after a few of these. Routine brain surgery was done for that.

As you can see, there was no magic.