Surgeries and Surgeries
- mycorneroftheworld
- Nov 22, 2017
- 3 min read
2017 has been a crazy year. In addition to multiple hospital stays, I ended up having a VP Shunt put in for my IH.
The shunt install on September 14th was the start of a long line of craziness. Surprisingly, cutting into my head hurt a lot less than I thought it would when I woke up. It wasn't that bad and until about the 36 hours mark, I felt a little better post surgery. Then it all went wrong. I got pretty sick in my hospital room and one of the neurosurgery team members lowered my shunt the next morning thinking it was from overdraining.
But it didn't work. Instead I got sicker and sicker even after leaving the hospital. From that point until November 1st, I kept one thing fully down. My neurosurgeon turned down the shunt one more time in office because every scan and test said my shunt was functioning correctly. We ended up scheduling one more test because I was miserable. The cisternogram that was eventually done showed that my proximal catheter wasn't draining or taking anything in. So a shunt revision was scheduled for November 16th.
I ran into a problem the day after it was finally scheduled, my heart rate began increasing. I went from what had mostly been a low heart rate since August to a heart rate that would only dip below 100 maybe twice a day. Because of the heart rate, my nephralogist didn't think I could wait 3 weeks for surgery. So the date for surgery was moved up to November 1st.
November 1st came and I was ready. But it didn't work. I knew the second I came out of surgery that it wasn't any different. And it wasn't. After a LP with and opening pressure of only 2 less than my opening pressure pre-shunt and a shunt tap that couldn't even suction anything out, another revision was scheduled.
On November 7th, I ended up with another shunt revision. Again it didn't feel different after but it was so much worse in pain. I ended up in a ball in my hospital bed for 20 hours crying in pain. But other than a much bigger incision, the shunt area felt exactly the same.
So the decision was made to put in an ICP monitor. My neurosurgeon was out of town for the weekend so he said I could leave after being stuck in for 10 days knowing that I was being readmitted.
So along came the 15th. I had an ICP Monitor installed. It was horribly painful. I hate crying (especially in public) and I cried for 3 hours between the recovery room and ICU. I begged for 3 hours to have them rip it out. I had an IV that wasn't working without burning so I started refusing pain and nausea meds until I ended up with a line in my arm.
The ICP Monitor ended up being taken out the next day. It was a long night and day. The ICP monitor says my pressures are fine so the shunt is working. I believe it is working when I'm not moving at all because you basically lay still while it's installed. To me it's like when they tried to do an LP without turning me. I get it says it's fine but the pressure in my head says it isn't.
So I'm back home. I got Friday night and I haven't kept anything down again since Saturday morning. I'm annoyed that it's almost Thanksgiving and I have no Christmas stuff up because I barely have energy to walk to the bathroom. Plus I have a slight fever that keeps creeping up a little more each day. I am just overextended. I've had my head cut into 4 times in 2 months and I feel a lot worse than I did before anything started.
Comments