My son had a cavernous angioma, which is an abnormal collection of blood vessels in the brain. Unfortunately, the location of the angioma was quite poor, deep in the frontal lobe, so very near the speech center. This is a rare thing in children, so I did some investigation. I asked my local neurosurgeon who he recommended for a second opinion, and I did a literature search to see who had published articles on this condition. There was one vascular neurosurgeon’s name that came up more often than others, and I contacted him by email. He was very responsive and kind to me immediately. When we travelled 1,000 miles to meet with him at a large children’s hospital, he told us that he could perform this surgery without any danger of our son losing his ability to talk. He told us to be prepared for a week in the hospital, but my son was up talking immediately, and he was walking within 6 hours of surgery. He ate a breakfast burrito 8 hours after surgery and we were discharged less than 24 hours after surgery. He had just a small bandage, otherwise you would not know that he had undergone a major operation.

We had a bad experience with an anesthesiologist and decided that from then on, we would choose our own, rather than be assigned one. I wanted someone competent and compassionate, who would talk to my teenage daughter and answer her questions. She has frequent surgeries, and I do everything I can to make it bearable. I asked staff at the hospital, our primary doctor, and several nurse friends for recommendations. We went to meet the anesthesiologist who received the most endorsements, and she’s fabulous. We make sure the office always schedules us with Dr. V. and we call the operating room the day before to confirm it was done.