(dramatic orchestral music)
It didn't really hit me how dangerous it was.
It was dealing with my brain.
I just love the outdoors.
Surfing is definitely, water's definitely my passion.
I outrigged, did triathlons.
I'm a big runner, lots of yoga.
I'm into Pilates, I'm an adventure person, definitely.
Robyn came to us about four months ago,
complaining of a whooshing sound in her left ear
that had been bothering her for some time.
I wake up Easter morning and I hear this whish,
whish, whishing sound in my eardrum on my left ear.
It sounded like, when I was pregnant I could hear my,
you hear the baby's heartbeat through a sonogram
that's what it sounded like in my left ear.
And that can be fatal when things start
to herniate through the base
of the skull.
So that's often when people die of a brain hemorrhage,
that's why they're dying.
I didn't think anything of it other than like, okay,
this is weird, why am I hearing my heartbeat?
And then it just increased as the months went on
and then it started throbbing on the back of my ear.
I noticed some memory, I know what I wanna say.
But I have to stop, really think about the word I want.
We worked her up with some scans and
eventually, we did an angiogram where we went in through
her groin and took some pictures of the arteries in her head
and neck.
At first I was like taken back 'cause nothing, you know,
I've been healthy girl, so what the heck is this, you know?
And that showed us, what's called a fistula,
which is an abnormal connection between an artery and vein
inside the head where there shouldn't be one.
He saw it and it was like a big cobweb,
just all bundled up and it was a level two
so that means it needed surgery.
Today we're going to work inside
Robyn's veins in her brain,
either putting glue or coils or a combination of both inside
the veins to try to cure the fistula.
You basically pack as many coils
as you can into a tight space
and that sort of seals off the hole between the artery
and the vein the best that you can.
Just a glide wire and a glide cap on top will be a road map
injector road map, back, back, back, back, back, back good.
Forward, road map on, ready to fire, all right.
Step one is done then move to step two.
These are long metal strands of platinum, very soft metal.
When they come out of the catheters,
they form balls or coils of metal.
I'm gonna click on being once that second coil coming in
there, okay?
Second coil being detached.
This is awesome.
Good job.
Everything went very well.
So we got the fistula completely cured,
at least angiographically.
So it's gone on the pictures.
Down the road, can I continue
my normal lifestyle out surfing?
The goal is to get you back to doing
exactly what you wanna do.
Sharp has state-of-the-art equipment,
which allows us to have better imaging of the brain
and allows us to put the coils exactly
where we want them to go
to give us the best chance to cure Robyn's fistula.
I can't do a marathon. (laughs)
It's like, don't go running right now.
So Robyn is a really sweet patient
that I'm taking care of today.
She is an incredible woman,
came in after listening to her own body.
She's a very healthy,
conscientious woman and notice some different sensations
that she was feeling.
So let me just show you what we did.
It was this fistula here where there's the abnormal
connection between the artery and the vein.
So here was when we're done.
Oh, wow.
And so you don't see any veins at all.
So that's what we get a complete,
at least angiographic cure, in other words,
there's nothing left on the pictures.
There's no abnormal veins.
Can I ask you some silly questions?
Where are you?
Grossmont.
Okay, what year is it?
19, oh my gosh!
Seriously wrong, 1990.
No!
Oh my gosh!
Is it 2002? 2019, sorry.
2019, okay, do you know the month?
October.
October, okay.
Sometime was that one of those word finding where you felt
like you knew it, but you couldn't get it out?
That's what you were describing over
the last couple of weeks, right?
You knew it was 2019, you just couldn't say.
1990 is like c'mon Robyn.
When you try to say it you say something else.
Things may take a while to adjust back to normal,
but I do wanna see how these word finding difficulties
progress and make sure the headaches get better
and things like that.
There's definitely a percentage of people that come in
at the right time where we're able to save their lives
by doing a preventative surgery
and that was the case.
In Robyn's case, I believe because
I think her fistula eventually would have
bled into her head and she might have died from that.
My word finding has gotten better.
Doctor Viets saying, it's the pressure
it's like regulating the pressure now in the brain,
the blood flow to the brain.
Today's December 19, 2019.
It's like my brain's getting food now
so now it's all happy going yeah!
(gentle music)
I'm easy peasy, I just kinda go with the flow,
like the ocean, like the waves.
(gentle music)