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Dear List-family - especially those who're members of the "Hole in the Head Gang," and those who take non-prescription, over-the-counter vitamins and supplements...... During last week's major plastic surgery I had what the surgeon referred to as an "potentially dangerous anomaly," that caused what had been planned as being a 5 hour surgery to take 10 hours. It could have been caused by my 10/94 unilateral pallidotomy and/or it could have been caused by the accumulative effects of the non-prescription, over-the-counter vitamins and supplements I took daily up to two weeks prior to the surgery, at which time per the doctor's orders, I ceased taking all but the PD-related drugs, The reason my doctor told be to stop taking the vitamins and supplements, including vitamin E, Gingko Biloba, Coenzyme CQ10, and the Centrum Silver multivitamins was because it's definitely known that vitamin E, and Gingko-related supplements cause blood to slow down in coagulating, thus potentially causing excessive blood loss during surgery. And THAT is exactly what happened to me - with an odd twist to the experience. It appears that ONLY on the RIGHT side of my body (and my pallidotomy was performed on the LEFT side of my brain to help the right side of my body) was there excessive bleeding accompanied by very slow clotting. According to the surgeon it seemed to him like the right side and the left side were each having totally different surgical experiences! This evening I spoke with Tony Schoonenberg, Dr. Iacono's assistant in order to discuss this anomaly and find out if such a thing might in some way may be related to having had a unilateral pallidotomy, however, Tony hadn't ever heard of that in relation to the neurosurgery. This bleeding p;problem MAY be just limited to my own surgical experience and can be a one-time-only event, however, I felt it should be mentioned here on the List because so many of our List members have had neurosurgery and others are thinking about having surgery. Forewarned is forearmed.... Barb Mallut barb_msn@email,msn.com