On April 25, 2017 I had brain aneurysm surgery at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. A brain scan during my two-week stay in the J.W. Goethe University Hospital (Frankfurt, Germany) showed that I had a significant aneurysm. When my internist reviewed the 7 pages of narrative coming from Frankfurt, all in German, she told me that I had better find a neurosurgeon. That was a bit of a shock, but I did meet with a neurosurgeon at Virginia Hospital Center who said that he could insert a coil without invasive surgery or open my head and clip it.

I put something out on Facebook about this (another reason to love FB for me), and Carol DANDY Beckley, a friend from Camp Atahi days, immediately wrote that I should go to Rafael Tamargo at Johns Hopkins, who holds the Walter E. Dandy chair. Walter E. Dandy just happened to be her grandfather, and was known for doing the first direct surgery on brain aneurysms starting in 1939. The next thing I knew I was up at Hopkins seeing Dr. Tamargo, who happens to be a big fan of the Dandy family.

I am still so grateful to Carol because a young surgeon at Hopkins inserted a Pipeline™ Embolization Device after inserting a coil into the aneurysm and I was home the next day. Amazing and painless! Two procedures to check on it over the next year confirmed that the aneurysm had disappeared. It was a miserable two weeks in the Frankfurt hospital, but it probably saved me!

So, why are you telling us all this?

You probably are wondering how that is related to my heart surgery, which previously crossed my mind. My cardiologist told me that I couldn’t do the heart surgery until I had the aneurysm surgery, but not the other way around. So, at my appointment last week I casually mentioned the aneurysm surgery to Dr. Smith, and he asked me to get clearance from Hopkins, which surprised me, but I thought that would be simple since they were doing no further testing. Thus, I was surprised when I contacted Dr. Tamargo’s department today to find that they want me to have an MRA (MR Angiography). My anxiety level went sky high since I leave for NYC in one week.

Luckily, I was able to schedule an appointment for tomorrow morning at 8 at the Johns Hopkins Radiology Department in Bethesda. Another crisis hopefully averted.