[Maverick]

Hi All,

I am pretty new here, but I hope someone can help me gain some answers to what is going on.

To give you some background, I am 30 years old and 15 years ago, as a young man I suffered a massive subarrachnoid brain haemorrhage which nearly killed me. Indeed I arrested twice on the operating table, yet by chance and luck, I am still here. As a general rule am normally quite okay. I have no impairment in movement or brain function, in terms of everyday logic, problem solving, etc. Just a rather poor short-term memory and issues in organizational skills. For reference, the haemorrhage was caused by Polycystic Kidney and dual-berry anyeurism, of which one ruptured.

However, the following has taken place since.
About 10 years ago, I used to get attacks of dizziness, normally lasting about 30 seconds or so which simply made me feel very sick and hot, commonly breaking out into a serious sweat. These would happen anything between once a month to, at their height, 2 or 3 times a day.
After a year or so, these eventually went away, but were replaced approximately 5 years back with a tendency to occasionally, perhaps 3 or 4 times a year, fit in my sleep, which resulted in a dislocated shoulder. Again, this lasted for about a year before going away by itself.

Now the problems are back, and this time I've been putting up with it for almost 2 years, hoping it would go away, as the other two did, but it isn't showing any signs of stopping.

What happens now is this...
I get dizzy spells and 'blackouts'. Sometimes I get a warning of up to 2 or 3 minutes whereby I feel a little disconnected from reality, sometimes I hear my own voice in my head and can almost talk myself out of the episode that may otherwise be coming before the dizzyness strikes, other times it comes on in 10 seconds or so and I can't do anything about it. When the dizziness actually strikes, it's like my brain has been hit with strong drugs in a sudden rush, the hot feeling from 10 years ago breaks out and then I black out. To the outside world, I am still conscious and at times even continue with 'life', such as completing paperwork, doing whatever I was doing previously, etc. I even once managed to carry on driving for about 5 or 6 miles without incident before the episode ended and I 'regained control'.
However, those who know that I have these episodes will recognise them, as I may appear confused or very one track minded, only focussing on what I had planned out in my mind to get done, I never actually lose consiousness. I just have no consious involvement during this phase, it's like I'm on autopilot.
Typically the fog slowly lifts after around 5 to 10 minutes from the episode beginning, whereby I may be a little confused for a couple of minutes - I will however have no memory of the time between the dizzy spell starting and it's eventual end, I then have to piece together what has happened in between. Sometimes, with something to focus on, such as really concentrating on reading a book or email, even after the dizziness has already kicked in I can stop the 'blackout phase' from happening and only get the dizzy spell and hot sweats, occasionally with a strong emotional rush of negative feelings for a minute or two before returning to normality.

Post haemorrhage, I had various CT's and MRI's, both with contrast and was given an all clear, but this was perhaps 12 years ago now.

This is happening anything between once a month and twice a week at the moment and I don't know what to do about it. Is this condition known? Is there anything I can do?

Any help appreciated. Mav