Jo was booked in for a clipping or possible bypass of the aneurysm that had haemorrhaged in 2000, as the coiling had failed to occlude it and it was still filling.
Jo checked into the hospital in Cambridge on the Thursday as the operation was scheduled for 8:30 the following morning. Jo phoned me from the hospital and was in good spirits as she regarded the date of 08/08/08 as particularly auspicious, being her goddaughter’s eigth birthday and eight being regarded as very luckyby the Chinese.
At 14:58 the Neurosurgeon, phoned me to say the operation had gone well as far as the aneurysm was concerned but that damage had been done to the blood vessel when they tried to clean it out as the coils had gone through the back of the aneurysm, the part they couldn't see, and “cut through the blood vessel like a cheese grater.” This had meant the operation lasted one and a half hours longer than expected and he was concerned at the possible damage to the brain by having those blood vessels clipped off for so long. As he described it, the right half of her brain had been asleep for longer than they hd anticipated and would have forgotten it had a left half of the body to operate. The best case scenario is that the brain would remember, the worst case scenario is that it would have to relearn these functions.
The repaired blood vessel had only a 50% flow through it. Jo was therefore kept under sedation with drugs to lower the brain's need for oxygen and hopefully give the flow time to establish itself.
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