I Got Hydrocephalus Again At 22 Years Old
- Caitlin McConnell

- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
As you guys know , I went into surgery on January 14 to remove my calcified shunt tubing . At this point, my Neurosurgeon did not think I needed the VP shunt any longer since it had broken in my neck and no fluid was pooling up. So I scheduled the elective surgery for January 14 and he removed the calcified tubing from my neck into my abdomen. Less than 2 weeks later, i fell and one of my incisions opened up and leaked spinal fluid. When I was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis I was sent home from the hospital on IV antibiotics that I did not tolerate very well. I started to have weird symptoms that were not the typical hydrocephalus symptoms like neck pain and headaches, and tooth pain. My doctor told me if I had hydrocephalus I would have constant headaches and vomiting. The weird thing was that I was having headaches but they were not consistent and would come and go. I went to the dentist because I had this weird tooth pain but they took X-rays and they said nothing was wrong with my tooth. It was not until I went to the eye doctor that we found the issue; both of my optic nerves were swollen which indicates that I had hydrocephalus. So we scheduled a meeting with the doctor because I didn’t think that I needed to put the shunt back in. After talking to the doctor we all agreed that it was necessary. So the next day, I went back to the OR. Ever since then, I have been back to normal and all of the seizures and weird symptoms that I was having went away. So it turns out that my ventricles work partially on their own but don’t work well enough.




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