Team DailyPedia
34-year-old Jade Stevens thought it was just a plain migraine. But it was too painful it left her feeling wobbly and listless. For months since late 2013, she endured this crippling condition.
When she went to the doctor to have herself checked, they insisted she had nothing to worry about and just prescribed her with strong painkillers.
Then, one day, while taking a shower, the mother-of-two was struck by an extreme headache that she described was like an ‘ice pick being stabbed’ through her head.
That same day, her partner, Clive Phillips, saw Jade curled up on her bed. He convinced her to go to the hospital but she initially refused because no one will take care of the kids.
The next day, she was brought to Bedford Hospital where she was initially diagnosed with an extreme migraine. However, after she insisted on having a CT scan, it revealed a bleed on Jade’s brain. A mass of twisted arteries and veins in her brain was already ruptured under high pressure.
She was quickly transferred to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge where she was diagnosed by brain specialists with arteriovenous malformation – a rare condition that causes a lump of tangled weak veins in the brain which are at risk of bursting when high pressure blood is pumped from the heart.
She was then placed under operation wherein surgeons cut a hole in her skull and removed the mass of blood vessels.
According to Jade, “I had a headache, but not the migraine type, I felt sick and generally sluggish and it almost felt like I was still a bit drunk from the night before. I would also feel quite un-coordinated and off balance. Even before I woke up properly in the mornings I would reach across and take some tablets. The doctor said it looked like I was having migraines and I just took tablets, but I was having to take them every day in the end. But as soon as I had the CT scan after I went to hospital all of a sudden all hell broke loose. The doctor said to me “you’ve had a bleed on the brain” and I couldn’t believe it. The operation to remove the mass was so scary – I didn’t know if I was going to come out of the operation, and if I did, how much damage was going to be done.”
It took eight hours before the surgeons peeled the back of Jade’s scalp and cut a 5cm square in her skull to remove what’s causing her headache.
After the risky operation, she was temporarily blinded but eventually as she recovered, her headaches were also gone.
The patient said it was the only way the doctors could get rid of the mass completely. “My vision when I first woke up was like I was underwater, but now it is not perfect but much better,” she said.
In an interview, Jade was glad to say, “I’m much better now, but I have to take longer words quite slowly. I feel very lucky. Normally when you have a bleed on the brain it causes lots of damage, but I was mostly fine.”
