Please Help! Worried about my Father!

[tabitha_kristen]

My father (51 years old) suffered from a very sudden horrible headache on Sunday morning. He had to leave the room and go to a dark quiet place because it was so severe. Described by him as the worst headache he's ever had and he's had some really bad headaches (including migraines!). He continued to have the headache all day and wouldn't listen when we told him to go to the hospital. He was sensitive to light and sound and seemed to be acting a little odd (but not incredibly so). The next morning (Monday) he woke up with the same horrible headache and we were all still very concerned but he thought it had to just be a very bad headache.

Last night, he started acting a little more unusual and he said he was having a lot of panic attacks (he's suffered from many panic attacks throughout his life but they haven't been too often lately.) Anyway, he also told us that Sunday was like a dream to him. He remembered things that happened but it didn't make sense to him. For instance, we were all sitting in a room talking and he remembered it as all of us sitting in a room with ropes around us, talking about gigantic bottles of pills. That obviously never happened.

Him saying that worried everyone even more but he continued being stubborn. Later on Monday, he began vomiting. He would complain of a panicky feeling, then horrible pain, then he would vomit. We finally talked him into going to the hospital and I had to stay home with my little ones. He's there right now and all I can do is wait for phone calls.

So far they've done a CT scan and they found (I guess) some blood in the left ventricle (I think that's what they said, the phone keeps breaking up and it's making it even harder to deal with because I'm so scared for him) - They transferred him to another hospital and said they'll be doing an Angiogram. Does ANYONE know what's going on? I don't know what to do and I'm constantly crying and panicking. Thankfully my kids are asleep because it's hard to be strong right now.

[Dr Sharma]

Hi there. I understand your concern for your dad. This severe headache episodes associated with photophobia and phonophobia, nausea could be migraine, un ruptured or just before rupture.
It is usually a larger aneurysm that is steadily growing which may press on the tissues and nerves and cause symptoms like pain above and behind the eye, numbness weakness on one side of the face, vision changes. When it hemorrhages, a person may experience sudden and severe headache, nausea, vomiting, stiff neck, usually the worst headache of life. The CT scan showing blood in the ventricle could be a ruptured aneurysm, hence the doctors want to do an angiogram.
The migraine headache is a possibility if the aneurysm is ruled out.
The delusions could be part of delusional disorder like bipolar disease or schizophrenia. Resurgence of panic attack is a possibility.
Wait  and watch for the doctors’ to comment after the angiogram. Keep the good faith in the meanwhile.

[ggreg]

Well, if they meant the left vetricle of the brain (and not the heart), then he had a bleed in his brain, where one of the blood vessels will burst, and it will cause his symptoms.  The angiogram is a type of X-ray where they can see how well the blood is circulating in various parts of the body.  See, a bleed like his comes from an aneurysm, whch is where a vessel will clog up and swell, until it reaches its breaking point.  Also, the docs will probably do some repeat head scans to watch how that bleed is doing, whether the collection of blood is getting too large.

You may recall hearing about Brett Michaels, the rock star from the 1980s band Poison, he had an aneurysm that burst, spent some time in the hospital, and other than slight loss of function on one side, he is pretty much back up to speed and doing concerts again.  He was pretty fortunate...others don't do very well, so you should indeed be concerned.  Look, this is your father, can you please get a babysitter to watch your kids for 24 hours, so you can go to where he is and find out more about his condition, plus you can see him.  Then you can return to your children and feel more comfortable about what is going on.

If it's your cell phone making static, you can try using the regular land line phone.  I hope things progress in a positive way for your father.  Let us know.