Hi All,

I don't know if anybody still remembers me.  I was diagnosed with MMD on April and went here for help on fighting with insurance company.  Long story short, I lost the battle with insurance company. I wasn't able to see Dr. Steinberg.  We appealed twice, but all failed. On July, instead of putting my life under some local surgeon’s knife who we can't fully trust, our family decided to control our own fate.  We don't want to waste more time on appealing again.  We believed successful and TIMELY surgery is more important than anything else.  My then only 8 months old son needs a healthy mother to take care of him, and my husband needs a healthy wife.  So we decided to find the best doctor that we can afford regardless wherever he lives in the world.

Our thought was, since Japan is the pioneer on treating MMD, why don’t we try Japan?  So after tons of research, we find the best MM surgeon in Japan who’s been conducting by-pass surgeries for over 800 cases (even more than Dr. Steinberg).  is the top 1 MM surgeon in Japan who has excellent reputation and MMD patients all over Japan.  He has his own (private) MMD (and stroke) surgery hospital in Osaka.

So my husband and I traveled to Japan on August, left my son home with grandma and grandpa.  I checked in to Dr. Touho’s hospital on Aug 6th.  Angiogram, Xenon CT, new MRA/MRI, blood test etc were done.  Instead of by-pass on both sides (which was suggested by Dr. Steinberg), Dr. Touho only wanted to give me by pass on the right side.  Based on Dr. Touho’s experience and my testing results, since I still have enough blood supply on the left side of my brain, if TIA never happened on the right side of my body, then he doesn’t recommend surgery on left brain.  The philosophy is a different on how to treat certain disease between eastern and western doctors.  I don’t want to go too far on this topic.  But anyway, my family totally agreed on Dr. Touho’s philosophy.

I had a successful bypass surgery on the right side on Aug. 14th.  Of course I had headache couple of times during the first week after surgery, and couple of minutes of mild numbness on my left fingers.  But nothing serious.  My husband had to go came back to state (for work and my son) only 2 days after my surgery.  I stayed in hospital all by myself.  I recovered very quick.  From the 2nd week after the surgery, I felt perfect fine.  No major headache, no numbness at all. 

During my one month stay in the hospital, all the nurses and staffs were very nice to us and very considerate.  Dr. Touho and his second hand doctor (Dr. Yanakawa) visited me everyday, answered all my concerns and questions very patiently.  Nurses brought me home made low sugar Japanese cakes.  Dr. Touho even made some clay doll toys (his hobby) for my son during his spare time.  I didn’t feel lonely.  I felt that I was surrounded with people who really cares even though I was in another country alone.

I checked out from the hospital on Sept 1st and came back from Osaka to Chicago on my own.  Due to the Labor day traffic, lot of the flights were delayed or cancelled.  So I have to fly from Osaka to San Francisco first, then was rerouted to D.C, then Chicago.  It’s a total of 36 hours or a little longer trip.  I carried a fully loaded backpack and a carry on suitcase all by myself.  I didn’t have any symptom during the whole trip, although I was exhausted at the end.

After one month of coming back from Japan, on Oct 6th, I started a new job.  I’m working fulltime now.  Chasing around my 13 months old son all over the place every day, feeling strong enough to handle the day to day activities without any weakness on the left side of the body.

I just want to thank everyone on this forum for giving me advises and helped me out in the past. Especially thanks for Lisa and her husband Mark who nicely gave us lots of insider information of MMD.

If anybody wants to know more about Dr. Touho and his hospital, here’s the link:

http://www.touhoclinic.jp/

You can use some online translation software if you can't read Japanese.  The translation is not always perfect, but most of the time, you can understand at lest.

You can also asked me on the forum or email me your question.  I’ll try my best to answer.

Cherry

Nicky,

check your email.

Good luck.

LoveKeanu

Hi Tsengtseng

I sent you a PM awhile back but I see you haven't opened it. Here is Dr Touho's email:

auatd900@wombat.zaq.ne.jp

Good luck

Mark (Luca's Dad)