Happily Ever After

Thanks to Baylor Dallas, a young woman keeps a very important date.

In early 2006, April McCann, a 30-year-old Dallas resident, saw a neurologist for evaluation of her chronic migraine headaches. The neurologist suggested a routine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test.

“After the MRI, I hadn’t been gone 20 minutes when I got a call from my neurologist,” McCann remembers. “My doctor said I had a large aneurysm in my brain, and I needed to see a neurosurgeon immediately.”

Time is of the Essence
An aneurysm is a localized bulging area in the wall of an artery, caused by weakening of the vessel wall. A ruptured brain aneurysm can cause life-threatening bleeding.

The next day, McCann met with David Barnett, M.D., a neurosurgeon on the medical staff at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas. He told her that her aneurysm couldn’t be treated externally through the skull. Instead, it would require an endovascular approach, so he referred her to Joe Hise, M.D., a diagnostic and interventional neuroradiologist on the medical staff at Baylor Dallas.

“April’s aneurysm was on the mid-portion of the basilar artery at the base of the brain,” Dr. Hise says. “It was about 18 millimeters in diameter, which is quite large. It hadn’t ruptured, but it needed to be removed from her circulation as soon as possible.”

“The news was a shock, to say the least. One day I had been busy working and preparing for my upcoming wedding, scheduled in October. Just a few days later, my fiancé, Kevin, and I pondered whether to cancel our plans and get married right away,” McCann says. “We didn’t care— we could go to a justice of the peace and throw a backyard barbecue. We just wanted to be married before the procedure, in case anything happened to me.” But after much deliberation, they decided to wait.

Delicate Procedure
Surgeons on the medical staff at Baylor performed coil embolization on McCann, in which a micro-catheter is threaded from an artery in the groin up into the brain. Once it reaches the aneurysm, flexible platinum coils are inserted to block the aneurysm and reduce the risk of rupture.

“In April’s case, the procedure was performed in two stages,” Dr. Hise says. First, an intracranial stent was inserted to stabilize the aneurysm. Three months later, after scar tissue anchored the stent in place, the coils were inserted.

While ultimately making an excellent recovery, McCann experienced two setbacks along the way: a reaction to anesthesia, and some minor bleeding that caused stroke like symptoms affecting her eyesight, speech and balance. In time, she regained normal function.

In Sickness and in Health
After “a rough six months,” she and Kevin did marry—on Oct. 21, 2006, as originally planned.

“When you promise to love each other ‘in sickness and in health,’ you never realize how soon you may need to count on that,” McCann says.

“The quality of care I received at Baylor Dallas was fantastic. I had never been so scared, but Dr. Hise was wonderful.”

By Deborah Paddison

For more information or to schedule an evaluation at the Baylor Neuroscience Center,
call 1-800-4BAYLOR.