August 27, 2012
I too was very lucky to survive SCAD. I am not a young woman but in good health. At the age of 62 I was having a very bad week with multiple headaches and just generally feeling terrible. Put it all down to working and an estate sale in a dusty basement. That weekend my friends noticed that one pupil was huge while the other was pinpoint. I called my neurologist thinking that it was migraine related and he had me into an MRI machine within a hour. As it turns out I had had a right sided Carotid Artory Dissection. Out of nowhere and with nt reason the wall of my carotid had split, a blood clot had formed and was blocking the blood from getting to my brain. He immediately put me on clot busting injections and I was on Warfarin for 6 months. The blood clot reabsorbed into the wall of the artery and I have ultrasounds each year to make sure nothing else is going on. My Dr. told me they only see this with chriopractic or accidents and no reason why this should happen spontaneously. I believe that I have short term memory loss due to this. I know that my right eyelid droops. I have had surgery to correct that but it still droops when tired or stressed. I also have a hard time getting my right to go from reading to distance focus. I asked my cardiologist about the sharp pains that I get in my neck at that spot and were they normal. She said that she had never known anyone who survided a dissection so didn’t know. That was not what I wanted to hear. Been living with the fear of “will I survive if this should happen again”. Has anyone else had a carotid dissection?I would love to get involved with any trials or speak with anyone who has gone through the same thing.Joyce