A few days ago, the 6-year-old daughter of a friend started feeling very sick. She couldn’t stop throwing up, but her mom — who is an anesthesiologist — didn’t think it was serious enough to go to the hospital right away.
Then, her daughter said something strange:
“Mommy, I see two copies of you!”
That’s when her mom realized something was really wrong, so they rushed to the ER.
At the hospital, the doctors asked the girl some questions, but she kept drifting in and out of sleep while answering. It was confusing, and no one could figure out exactly what was going on at first.
The doctors decided to take a sample of the fluid near her spinal cord to rule out meningitis or encephalitis, but instead of finding the usual signs of infection, they found something very unusual: the fluid was bloody.
Next, they did an MRI of her brain and found something rare: an arteriovenous malformation (AVM). This is a tangled mess of blood vessels in the brain that shouldn’t be there. And the worst part? It was bleeding.
The doctors quickly decided to transfer her to a specialized hospital nearby where they could give her the best care. She’s there now, and it looks like she will fully recover, but it could have been much worse — she could have died from the bleeding.
In the future, doctors will decide the best way to treat her, either with surgery, a procedure called embolization, or radiosurgery.
For a parent to see their 6-year-old go through something like this must be terrifying. It’s a reminder that some of the scariest problems are the ones hidden deep inside, ones that we can’t see until something goes wrong.
(Images shown were from the source and Google, showing a woman who had surgery for a similar condition.)
