My swiss cheese brain
*** WARNING *** CONTAINS PHOTOS OF MY MOST RECENT “WAR WOUNDS” ***
Well, after much drama and waiting for news, I finally made it into hospital and on Friday had the revision of my VP shunt. It turned out that the existing ventricular catheter (which is blocked and no longer works) was rather firmly attached to wherever it is, and my neurosurgeon decided to leave well alone, rather than risking causing more damage by trying to get it out, so put in a new one. The new one’s hooked up to the existing valve/reservoir, and uses the original tubing, but he wasn’t happy with the drainage from the distal catheter (the bit that goes into the abdomen), so replaced the lower part of the distal catheter as well. On Sunday afternoon I got let out (I got time off for good behaviour). It still amazes me that less than 48 hours after having brain surgery, albeit fairly minor brain surgery in the scale of neurosurgical procedures, that you can be out of hospital and at home. Less than 24 hours after surgery I’d managed to escape the ward and get downstairs in the hospital to get outside for a quick ciggie and a couple of phone calls.
All this means as well as having a head full of staples, I have an abdominal incision as well. I also now have the grand total of two and a bit shunts inside me now, and more holes in my head than swiss cheese. Most folks with a shunt make do with just the one, but of course me being me, it could never be that simple! The latest shunt count is a VP shunt (working), and a ventricular catheter (blocked, and not working, totally in the wrong place, and now not connected to anything), and an LP shunt (kind of working). Hopefully between the functioning VP shunt and the kind of working LP shunt they should keep my intracranial pressure under control, and stop from brain from imploding.
Having had similar ops twice before, I was all prepared this time, and a couple of weeks ago had my hair cut really short. I have an excellent neurosurgeon, who amongst his many talents is pretty good at working around hair. He does a lot of work with kids, so he always tries where possible to simply work around hair and just pull it to one side, and only resorts to shaving when absolutely necessary. I knew though from previous experience that for the first week post-op there’s not much to do apart from sitting around and watching daytime TV, while picking bits of dried blood and iodine solution out of your hair. Yep, ewwww! As you can’t get it wet at all (which rather precludes washing it) until after the staples have been taken out, there’s really not an awful lot you can do with it, so though I’m not actually going out anywhere that requires me to do anything with my hair, I know from experience that if I can’t wash it and it’s at a length where I can’t do a thing with it (not that I can do much apart from comb around the bits that aren’t stapled) it’d drive me crazy, so at least having it really short it’s behaving itself and doesn’t look too bad.
There’s some more staples hidden under my hair, but the latest count seems to be coming out at 14 staples. They should be coming out on Friday, all being well, and by the beginning of next week I should be okay to finally wash my hair, which will be a great relief. Having a head full of staples makes getting comfortable to sleep rather a problem, as I can’t sleep on my side or it pulls the abdominal stitches, and can’t sleep on my right side due to all the staples. Sleeping on my back has never been particularly comfortable for me, and my back tends to protest if I sleep on my back. With some strong painkillers though with my usual bedtime ones, they knock me out for the night.
With the abdominal incision this time, it’s slightly larger than the usual incision, presumably because they had to rummage around a bit to find the distal catheter. It’s still not a huge incision though, and my surgeon always does his best to make them as unobtrusive as possible. This time it’s a kind of crescent shaped incision around the top of the navel. I have only one complaint, and that’s that he keeps putting ‘em in the wrong damned place for me to be able to use ‘em to play noughts and crosses! I shall have to have a word with him about that.
All that remains now is to lounge around watching daytime TV and recuperating. I am intending to make the most of my time off work though, and apart from finishing off a couple of web projects, I’ve got a pile of books lined up for reading, and a stack of DVDs I’ve never got around to watching. There’s only so much daytime TV you can watch.
Jalysha Mayfield responds:
Posted: February 18th, 2009 at 1:40 am →
my grandmother had a brain anurism…. i really dont know everything that is needed to recupurate, but she has to have a SHUNT inserted….. can u tell me about the procedure?