Anxious much?!??

I'm not sure why I'm more anxious for this shunt revision than I was for any other previous surgery. It might be because I'm not in as much pain as I was for my shunt placement in June.

I was SO ready to be done with the high pressure pain and brain surgery seemed like the greatest thing in the world as it would put me on the road to recovery! I was begging for surgery!! But the pain isn't as constant these days as it was leading up to the last surgery.

Don't get me wrong... the pain is pretty awful by mid-afternoon and evening! But laying flat seems to fill up my ventricles again with CSF and I wake up every morning with a high pressure headache that goes away as soon as I get up out of bed. And then I have about an hour or three before I have to lay down again before I start vomiting from the low pressure headache pain. Once I lay down, though, at least in the morning and early afternoon hours, it's like a reset button and the headache calms down. But it doesn't do that in the late afternoon and evening.

Like I said, though, it's not as bad as it was before my last surgery. I even asked the Lord yesterday in my morning prayer if I was jumping the gun on this surgery. I wanted to know for sure that it was needed and boy, did He answer my prayer!!

Glen and I went to Costco without the kids (our second date this summer that wasn't to a doctor's office) and as soon as we pulled into the garage, I bee-lined it to our bedroom, laid down on the bed, and tried not to barf from the headache pain. Glen brought me dinner and I was, thankfully, able to eat it, but then the pain intensified to the worst it's been for several weeks. That's when a little voice in my head said, "Heavenly Father just answered your prayer. You need the surgery."

So here I am, laying in bed in my cool bedroom, anxiously waiting for tomorrow morning to come so that I can, hopefully, get on the road to recovery. My kids need their mommy back. My husband needs his wife back. Hydrocephalus needs to take a back seat while we play a more fun game of life.

Brain Surgery #6

Brain surgery #6 is on Wednesday. They're going to replace my shunt valve because it either under or overdrains CSF. We're hopeful that this Medtronic Delta valve will work better. But who knows?!! I miss my ETV.

We all learn life's lessons in our own ways and circumstances. I don't know why I get to learn them through physical challenges, but please don't compare your headaches or your difficult day or your problems with mine. Just because your issues don't require brain surgery doesn't mean they're not difficult, right?! With some of my friends I tend to think, "oh man! I'm SO glad I only have to endure brain surgeries instead of her drama! I'll pray for her tonight!"

The Lord strengthens us to rise above the challenges we've been given so that we can grow to be the sons and daughters our Heavenly Father knows we can become.

I Had No Idea!

May 11 was the first day I started to listen to this nagging idea that just wouldn't go away that maybe the headache I'd had since April 24, 2016 was actually a symptom of a build-up of spinal fluid in my brain. But I just couldn't imagine (or want to imagine) that the symptoms of hydrocephalus were a possibility when I'd been hydro-headache-free since 2004!

I even posted this letter to my brain with an "only me" privacy setting so that even my friends and especially my family wouldn't start to worry. But only a few days went by before I changed it to allow any of my friends to read it because the pain was getting worse and VERY worrying! As a mother of four, I knew I'd need help with everything and anything pertaining to the functioning of our home. I dealt with four brain surgeries in college to correct the build-up of spinal fluid in my brain (read more about that here), but I was not only kid-less, home-owner-less, and husband-less, I was younger and had lots of energy to fight the fight! 

And it only got worse...