Matt Leggat
All of my life, since the age of 5, I had been having really bad headaches. Fortunately, they were very infrequent, so I wasn't in pain all of the time. As I got older they became more frequent and intense. By the time I hit my early 20s, the headaches were becoming more regular and at times debilitating. I figured they were just headaches and pushed on through. Around the age of twenty five I started going to Urgent Care in hopes of finding relief. Over and over again i was told that looking into this further would be expensive, and since I didn't have insurance it was treated as a possible sinus problem. At one point, a Dr. put me on fioriset, a narcotic which took care of the pain but not the problem. I was maintaining the ability to got work and be productive while the problem in my head was growing.
Finally, while on a cross-country trip, the pain became so severe that I ended up in a hotel room in Omaha, Nebraska, unable to do much of anything. I went to a doctor again and was told to go back home and see a regular doctor. My brother flew out from Virginia and we drove back home. Once in Northern Virginia, I went to the family doctor and was ordered an MRI scan. The results were unexpected; I had an AVM (arterial venous malformation) in the left occipital lobe of my brain. I was sent to a neural surgeon and told it was operable but i would lose about 10 percent of my vision. I was delighted to have an end to the pain in sight. Unfortunately, I didn't have insurance. So, my mother worked the system. She figured out that claiming myself as indigent, the state of Virginia would pay for my hospital stay. The surgeon let me work out a payment plan, so we were ready to go. When the day finally came, everyone involved believed the procedure was going to be textbook, and I would be in recovery within four hours. It didn't work out that way.
The morning, as I remember it, was hot and hazy. For the first time in my life I had totally surrendered myself to God and was at peace going into surgery. Coming out was something totally different. It turned out the lack of a diagnosis for so many years had made my condition much worse than it needed to be, and no one knew this until they were in my head. The "four-hour" procedure turned into 24 hours, and they had to replace every drop of blood in my body- due to internal hemorrhaging. The AVM had grown so delicate that every time the area was just touched by the scalpel it would bleed. The team that worked on me never gave up, and I did come out alive-but barely. Now it was into a long sleep.
For two weeks I was kept in a drug-induced coma. The fear was swelling of the brain. The prognosis was grim. My family was told to expect a vegetative state or, on a better note, mental retardation. After the swelling had gone down, they started to take me off of the drugs. When I woke up, I asked for a cheeseburger. Even though I had survived, there was a long road ahead of me. The damage to my brain totally destroyed my right field of vision. I have no vision to the right in either of my eyes. Exactly 50 percent remains. Upon learning this, I was disappointed but the only path I could think of was forward. It took a while for my body to recover physically. After leaving the hospital, I could walk maybe 50 or 60 yards before collapsing. One of the things on my side was my age. Being young and strong going into this allowed me to heal quickly.
After my body healed, I went back to school to become a middle school teacher. My feeling has always been that I owe a huge debt to the universe because I am still here. Why did I make it? I had to relearn how to read and am now an English teacher. Limitations have never sat well with me, so I have a tendency to choose the hardest paths in life. My faith is tested on a regular basis.
Finally, while on a cross-country trip, the pain became so severe that I ended up in a hotel room in Omaha, Nebraska, unable to do much of anything. I went to a doctor again and was told to go back home and see a regular doctor. My brother flew out from Virginia and we drove back home. Once in Northern Virginia, I went to the family doctor and was ordered an MRI scan. The results were unexpected; I had an AVM (arterial venous malformation) in the left occipital lobe of my brain. I was sent to a neural surgeon and told it was operable but i would lose about 10 percent of my vision. I was delighted to have an end to the pain in sight. Unfortunately, I didn't have insurance. So, my mother worked the system. She figured out that claiming myself as indigent, the state of Virginia would pay for my hospital stay. The surgeon let me work out a payment plan, so we were ready to go. When the day finally came, everyone involved believed the procedure was going to be textbook, and I would be in recovery within four hours. It didn't work out that way.
The morning, as I remember it, was hot and hazy. For the first time in my life I had totally surrendered myself to God and was at peace going into surgery. Coming out was something totally different. It turned out the lack of a diagnosis for so many years had made my condition much worse than it needed to be, and no one knew this until they were in my head. The "four-hour" procedure turned into 24 hours, and they had to replace every drop of blood in my body- due to internal hemorrhaging. The AVM had grown so delicate that every time the area was just touched by the scalpel it would bleed. The team that worked on me never gave up, and I did come out alive-but barely. Now it was into a long sleep.
For two weeks I was kept in a drug-induced coma. The fear was swelling of the brain. The prognosis was grim. My family was told to expect a vegetative state or, on a better note, mental retardation. After the swelling had gone down, they started to take me off of the drugs. When I woke up, I asked for a cheeseburger. Even though I had survived, there was a long road ahead of me. The damage to my brain totally destroyed my right field of vision. I have no vision to the right in either of my eyes. Exactly 50 percent remains. Upon learning this, I was disappointed but the only path I could think of was forward. It took a while for my body to recover physically. After leaving the hospital, I could walk maybe 50 or 60 yards before collapsing. One of the things on my side was my age. Being young and strong going into this allowed me to heal quickly.
After my body healed, I went back to school to become a middle school teacher. My feeling has always been that I owe a huge debt to the universe because I am still here. Why did I make it? I had to relearn how to read and am now an English teacher. Limitations have never sat well with me, so I have a tendency to choose the hardest paths in life. My faith is tested on a regular basis.