So this happened today. My six-week old shunt wasn't helping my brain lately which meant one of two things: (1) there was a blockage somewhere the shunt system preventing enough spinal fluid to drain, or (2) the pressure setting for the shunt was too high or too low and over/underdraining my CSF. Either problem requires brain surgery. Again. For those of you keeping track, this was my third surgery since June and my seventh overall.
And as it turns out, the shunt was overdraining which is crazy because I totally thought it felt like it wasn't draining enough.
The plan was that if the shunt was clogged, they'd simply ("simply" for brain surgery??) revise the shunt system and is be on my way just like the surgeries in June and August. But since it was a problem with the pressure, we decided to use an external ventricular drain (basically like a shunt, but on the outside on my brain). I'll have this EVD for a few days as we use it to try to figure out the pressure at which my internal CSF pressure feels best.
In the meantime, Glen and I are experimenting with the physics behind it all. It doesn't take much to entertain us these days. And yes, the fluid you see in this video is my cerebral spinal fluid. Totally gross, but oddly very interesting!
No comments:
Post a Comment