Hi. My husband suddenly and acutely started having headaches on March 29. When he started vomiting I took him to the after hours clinic where he was prescribed codine. Later that night when they seemed to be getting worse (and rather scary for me to witness), I called the ambulance and he was taken to hospital. They kept him in over night and discharged him at 5am the next morning sighting migraine. I knew when I saw him again, it was something more and 6 hours later took him to our regular GP where she wrote a letter to the hospital for us to re-present. He was finally admitted that night (March 30) and after 2 days of observation it was decided he had a leak in his CFS system because the headaches would only reoccur when he stood or sat up. On the 3rd day (April 2), after they kept bumping him from the MRI list because it was determined his priority for it was low, they performed a lumber puncture to gage the pressure of his CSF and sent us home to get a private MRI.

The MRI immediately picked up a golf ball size colloid cyst in his 3rd ventricle. We were immediately sent back to the ER department of the hospital where we were finally taken seriously. By this time though the headaches for my husband had become crippling and server. He was admitted immediately the the Neuroscience HDU to await surgery on the collid cyst. That night however he coned (his brain started to shut down his respiratory system) in their care and he was taken back for emergency surgery at 3am to insert 2 shunts into his ventricles to relieved the pressure on his brain. He was then kept in a coma for half a day in the ICU before they woke him. Eventually when he woke he was able to talk and respond and had control of his body.

They waited 5 days from that surgery before performing a trans callosal interhemispheric resection (crainiotomy) of the cyst (on April 8). It took him 2 days to wake from that surgery and he woken to having no control over his entire body or speech.

We are currently 12 days out from the crainiotomy. He cant walk, he cant sit up, he will say maybe 3 words a day, if that, he has no control over his bowels or bladder, he cant even move his torso to roll over. I question him about our past and by pointing to yes no answers, he seems to have his complete long term memory but his short term memory is less then 30mins (he has no idea what happened to him). Essentially he is locked within a body that cant do what he wants it to do.

My husband is 33 years old, a chemical engineer in the oil and gas industry and father to two very small children.

I'm wondering if anyone else has lost so much from the resection of their colloid cyst through crainiotomy? and if so how long did it take to get back somewhat of a normal life? Will life for him/us ever return to normal?