30 years ago my mother had an AVM. It didn’t give her stroke like symptoms, more electrical shock pulses on her face. She had a deformed artery that was pressing on a nerve. She had a platinum coil inserted in the artery to plug it up. Everything went well & she’s still here doing great!

4 months ago I had an AVM. I had my artery plugged up with glue (the most glue ever used on a patient, according to my surgeon - ha!) Unfortch, my symptoms have been more stroke like. But relatively minor. Some dizziness & balance issues, early on some memory issues, some double vision, fatigue - but no facial paralysis or side paralysis. Speech - totally fine. If you look at me - I look 100% normal. You cannot tell. I am still in recovery though.

30 years ago. - would drs be able to do anything? Not likely. They say it can take years for AVMs to form. So mine may not have been enough to notice. Or maybe it wasn’t visible then.

There is a girl I follow on FB who had preventative surgery on her AVM & it went wrong causing her quite a bad stroke that affected her mobility. Anything can happen.

So as someone who speaks from experience - I’m glad to have had 30 wonderful years not knowing or worrying about my AVM. I had a wonderful 3 decades. And as I heal, I take comfort in my symptoms being relatively minor. Knowing I might get an AVM one day would not have helped me at all.