Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy Symptoms: Let's talk about it.

In the arena of being a carer Over the years when I have found times to be tough, I go back to thinking of the quote "The Man in the Arena" but of course these days it would be good to re-title it as "The Person in the Arena". Theodore Roosevelt many years ago captured beautifully the courage of the person in the arena who "dares greatly", sometimes over and over again. Being "in the arena" is hard work. Sometimes you feel strong and can roll with the punches but at other times you feel like curling up in a corner of the arena and just taking a rest. Other times you may need to exit the arena temporarily or for a longer period but no one can ever say you didn't give it a crack and you can take pride in the fact that you were not one of those "cold and timid souls" who prefer to point the finger from the sidelines. What does this have to do with CAA? It's a tough job as a carer and tough as your role changes from th...

MRI and Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy While my husband was in the Stroke Unit they were able to compare his MRI results to those taken two years earlier. It showed a substantial increase in the number of microbleeds throughout his brain in the last two years, all of which had been apparently asymptomatic. Of course this raises the question of how can you have a stroke and not know about it? In CAA it is common for microbleeds to occur without the person or their loved ones being aware of it. It's only when you do an MRI that you can see them. They generally don't show up in a regular CT scan. The image above shows a typical MRI of a person with CAA. So what is your approach and that of your medical practitioners into the future? Given that there is no known cause, no treatment and no cure, do you really want to have 6 monthly or annual scans to prove the deterioration of the condition? What purpose does that serve? We decided, in conjunction with his specialist, that there was li...

  The first major stroke caused by CAA One night two years later, my husband was acting sort of strange. He was very quiet. Didn’t say a lot. I asked if he was Ok. I even asked if he was annoyed with me. He said no but didn’t say a lot else. He was due to go out that night to see a film with some friends which he did (driving half and hour there and half an hour back). When he returned home he seemed OK. The next day he just didn’t seem to be himself. Still quiet, said he had a bit of a headache and was tired but that he was OK. I had a funeral to attend some distance from home (I needed to go and there was not enough to make me think I should stay) but I just felt in my gut that something was not right. I rang him a couple of hours later, he was not making any sense in his speech and I could not understand what he was trying to tell me. He also sounded very confused. I immediately thought that he’d had a stroke, I called a family member who lived locally who went around to see ...

Too young to have a stroke? We spent the weekend trying to get our head around what had happened. How could this be? He was so young. These sorts of things don’t happen at our age but of course these sorts of things can happen at any age.  We met with the neurologist on the Monday and his whole approach put us more at ease and he was easily able to identify the source of my husband's  symptoms. A small Sub Arachnoid Haemorrhage on the outside of the left side of his brain was clear on the MRI. This type of bleed causes a blood clot to sit on the surface of the brain and as it resolves over time it becomes irritated and sets off some temporary symptoms. He told us that it should resolve in a few weeks. However, the multiple strokes (very minor) identified by the radiologist were present but the neurologist said that this was not uncommon in people of his age but that it could be a condition called Cerebral Amyloid Angiopathy. He was gentle with us, for which I am eternally grat...