On the Finiteness of Time and Making Every Moment Count
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Image edited from Shop PBS Yesterday I attended a “Celebration of Life” for a dear friend from college, Lauren. She died suddenly of an arteriovenous malformation (AVM). A n AV-What? A quick internet search taught me that an AVM is a tangle of abnormal blood vessels connecting arteries and veins. You might remember from science class (I had to look it up), but arteries are responsible for taking oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the brain, and veins carry the oxygen-depleted blood back to the lungs and heart. My research told me that when an AVM disrupts this vital process, the surrounding tissue becomes oxygen-deficient. This can cause the affected arteries and veins to weaken, becoming susceptible to rupture. I learned that if the AVM is in the brain and ruptures, it can cause hemorrhage (bleeding in the brain), stroke, or brain damage. The image is shocking. But I had to keep reading more. This can’t be common? Brain AVMs are in fact quite rare, affec