Hello All!

First of all, I just wanted to say thank you to whoever runs this website, it's amazing that people can come here for support.

The reason why I am here is that a very very close friend of mine was recently diagnosed with MMD. She had a stroke or TIA about 9 months ago, and has been on a few different blood thinning medications since then. She has had a total of 3 angiograms. The last Angiogram performed, her doctor indicated that she has MMD. She had a consultation a couple days ago and now is scheduled to meet with a surgeon in about a week. For obvious reasons she is upset, but it doesn't help that her doctor did not give her a time table for the surgery and just recommended having the first procedure "As soon as possible."

I'm here for 2 main reasons. The first is that I'm trying to find as much information as I can for her that is valuable. Although I'm finding lots of good information, I can't lie in saying that I am a bit overwhelmed with the different types of surgeries, doctors, prognosis etc.

The second reason is that I just want to be there for my friend. I've never had a friend go through such a serious medical procedure and I just want to know the right things to say to be supportive. I think it would help hearing from someone else that had MMD, and what they would have wanted to hear when they were going through everything pre operation.

If you really want to go above and beyond, maybe you could email my friend your own personal experiences from your MMD experience.

Thanks for reading!

I'm sure others will chime in with their experiences, but your friend might want to watch these video diaries from a young woman who had MM and bypass surgery.  My husband had MM and found these really helpful when he was faced with surgery:

Start with the first one here:

http://youtu.be/jm-2Xx40nLg