So, I haven't posted updates in a while so here it goes. Shannon, Raphael, and LaurelEileen (myself) ended the summer and welcomed the fall by going on a trip to South Dakota. We left on October 3rd and stayed in South Dakota for 3 days, then heading down to Boulder Colorado. We spent nearly 5 days in Colorado, leaving early on the 11th and getting home at 1:36 am on the 12th. We had planned to stop, somewhere, to spend the night in a hotel, but Shannon kept saying she wanted to keep going. 

         Backing up a bit, we saw the neurologist on the 1st of October just before we left for our trip. We saw the cerebral angiography and the neurologists saw something on the imaging that looked like a fistula, but after further consultation with other neurosurgeons, it was confirmed that it is an A.V.M. (arteriovenous malformation), which is a lot more complicated. There are really two different ways to treat this A.V.M. Number 1, is to surgically remove it, or the other is a gamma knife surgery (which has radiation). The results of the gamma knife surgery can take up to three years to see if the A.V.M. was removed.  Additionally the radiation could kill some of the healthy brain tissue around that area. We have, as a family, decided to surgically remove A.V.M. to to get immediate results. The surgical recovery time would take up to 6 weeks for a healthy brain to recover and for someone who has already had a brain injury it may take up to 8 weeks. A risk that comes with this procedure is lots of bleeding. The surgeon we meet with is very confident on getting into the A.V.M. area of the brain. Once there, the hardest part is going to be navigating in the brain vessels. Then removing the A.V.M. is going to be difficult because it will be hard to know where one artery starts or ends and where a vessel starts or ends. We will know the date of the procedure in early November.

       Shannon is in high spirits and is doing therapy all the time. She loved the trip that we went on and I’m including 5 photos.