I'm advised that the arrival of the Uber-specialist's report in AVMED did not result in involuntary squeezing of their eyes shut, hands slapped to cover their ears and ululation such that AVMED was physically incapable of reading the content. What's more, I'm advised that AVMED have read the content and assessed it against the pseudo-scientific percentage waffle they've confused the AAT into believing in a past matter.
Accordingly, AVMED must have been making it up when it said this in the letter suspending my medical certificate:
Please be advised, CASA is unable to make a risk assessment for your fitness to return to flying until 12 months has elapsed following your embolisation procedure.
Surprising as it may seem to AVMED these days, even AVMED is subject to both the laws of physics and man-made laws. Not only
could they, they were
obliged to.
I'm advised that the only remaining issue in dispute is what kind of recurrent scanning should be done, and when. AVMED is pressing for the most dangerous form of scan - they demonstrated their ignorance of the various risks of the various kinds of scans during the stay hearing - and are pressing for it to be done, not on the anniversary of the most recent scan in November, but rather on the anniversary of the procedure in August. As is sadly usual these days, AVMED seems to me to choose the approach that will be most risky, expensive and inconvenient for the certificate holder. AVMED seems to me to be prepared to destroy the village to save the village - it's about 'safety' after all.
I've instructed my lawyer that I am completely uninterested in AVMED's views on these issues and will rely on the specialist's views on the most appropriate balance of risk and reward on follow-up scanning.
I will eventually post a 'lessons learned' out of all of this, but for those who have yet to take the hint: Be very, very careful about submitting to testing without knowing what it could coincidentally disclose. Some of you have what I had. And around 1 in 50 of you have a brain aneurysm. Now. Fortunately, the probabilities of that aneurysm rupturing are very low. As joseph w said earlier: "MRIs/CAT scans/Angiograms/whatever will show up all sorts of wonderous things that we more than likely would have been blissfully unaware of until we dropped dead at age 98 - from something completely unrelated...". I think we can confidently guess what AVMED will do if they find out that you have a "brain aneurysm". Imagine how much they could scare people with a term like "brain aneurysm" and selective quotes from the scariest 'studies' (just as they do with "vision deficiency" as in "colour vision deficiency").