Brain Scan Follow Up

I recently had my 22nd brain scan. The first one was in 1988. A CATscan. It's hard to believe that it came out negative and didn't show any aneurysms. It had taken a while to convince my primary doctor to get tested and then to get it covered by our health insurance. It was only the family history of my father and uncle dying of ruptured brain aneurysms that got me covered.

We were so happy at the time with that negative result and I joyfully tried to get my brothers to also get tested. Back then we were under the false impression that only males in our family had aneurysms. Dan went ahead and arranged to be tested. Fortunately his wife was working at Jefferson Hospital as a nutritionist in the neuroscience department and asked for advice. It was recommended to her that Dan get an angiogram which was a lot more detailed than a CATscan. He did and an aneurysm was found. He had brain surgery to get that clipped but that's another story. Liz asked if his aneurysm would have been revealed by a CATscan and the answer was probably not.

A few months later I went in and had an angiogram and two aneurysms were found. That was in November 1988 and Becky was seven months pregnant at the time. We waited until June 1989 to have my brain surgery.

There again that is another story. I've been having brain scans approximately every two years since then. This year I had my CTA scan at Roswell on May 3rd. Everything went well as usual and I guess nothing was obviously wrong because no one was in a hurry for a follow up consultation visit. I had one scheduled the following week by my neurosurgeon apparently had a conference rescheduled for that time that we was finally able to travel and attend since the pandemic. My follow up appointment was rescheduled over a month later on July 22nd.

My scans were of no concern and I didn't even meet with the neurosurgeon but rather will one of the PAs. That was good news. The pic above is one of the many scans I received on a disks and spent some time looking at but I couldn't tell anything. The PA actually said he had to review the scans side by side with the previous ones. Well, things are good and my doctor says I don't need to get another brain scan for five years. That's the longest time ever between scans for me.