Brad Madvig

Welcome to our CaringBridge website. We are using it to keep family and friends updated in one place. We appreciate your support and words of hope and encouragement. Thank you for visiting. 
After 18 months, I finally decided to start one of these sites  to keep everyone updated about Brad's Journey. I will summarize the last 18 months with some of the big happenings. 

2015 - Brad was diagnosed with a benign rare tumor called Lhermittes- Duclose and was diagnosed with high spinal fluid pressures (had 3 spinal taps)
2016 -
July - Brad diagnosed with a pseudotumor -build up of fluid behind his left eye and was referred to the U of M Clinics to see a neurosurgeon. 
August - Schedule surgery to place a stent in the back of Brad's head to help drain the excess fluid. This original surgery didn't happen, instead the neurosurgeon found a complex dural arteriovenious fistula. Pockets of blood vessels that have formed in and around Brad's brain. He had several of these that encompassed hundreds of arteries and veins in his head. It was decided that with the combination of high spinal fluid and and arteriovenious fistula it was too dangerous to do too much at one time. So the plan was going to be staged embolizations (4 surgeries in September, 1 in October, 1 in November and 1 in December).


2017 - 
February  8- Embolization surgeries had been happening about once a month, and the neurosurgery team was still concerned by the level of pain Brad was having from headaches and that his eye sight wasn't getting better.  They decided to put a shunt into Brad's head to see if that would lower the spinal fluid pressure.  

February 9  - Brad stopped talking and responding to the doctors and to his family and friends, he went into a coma like state for 6 days.

February 10 - While Brad was in the coma like state the doctors ordered an MRI to see what was causing Brad to be in this state and he coded, they lost his airway and had to perform an emergency tracheostomy.

Feb. 13 - After many long days and many tests, it was determined his shunt was over draining the fluid in his head, they decided the best thing to do was to turn the shunt off by putting stitches into the catheters rendering the shunt inoperatble.

April - Surgeries of the fistula resumed, Brad had a surgery while in the ICU recovering from surgery  he had his first major seizure.

May - He had 2 surgeries this month, resulted in cutting off the blood supply to his left ear,  he eventually had to have surgery on his ear to remove the necrotic tissue and performed a skin graft. The second surgery something happened to his left facial nerve and his left side of his face has what seems to be a permanent thing. 

June - September - Brad was doing alright over the summer had a couple of admissions into the ER/Hospital for severe pain and nausea.


October - Brad had seizure #2, I had to call an ambulance to bring him to the U of M, it was decided that the fistula surgeries would continue. He had a surgery in October, seemed to be fine. He was in and out of the hospital within a couple of day.s

November - Brad had another episode of pain and vomiting, was admitted into the hospital for observation.  He had embolization number 10, surgery went fine with no complications.

December - Approximately 2 weeks after the surgery Brad was admitted into the ER for the same pain and vomiting  episodes and he had embolization #11 on December 8. The surgery itself went good, Brad had a seizure while in the recovery room and proceeded to spend a week in the hospital.