Monday, March 2, 2015

Shunt Revision, Pity Party

Been thinking about this all morning, so here goes.

Back in the early 90's, I had gone to chorus practice. While there, I tripped on a wheel of the dolly the piano was on. I landed on my hands but my head shook from the impact. When I got up, I have a MASSIVE headache! I drove home and told my father I had a headache and I was going to go to bed. I did not know he didn't hear me.

During the night, I got up and got into the tub, thinking this might help relieve my headache. This was the last thing I remember.

In the morning, my father found me lying in the tub out of it. At 80+ years old, he dragged me out of the tub, got me dressed, and took me to the Drs, apparently I had asked him to take me to the Dr instead of the hospital, again,  don't remember. Once at the Drs, I went in by myself, he said he wanted me to go get an MRI. I told my dad I didn't want to go get it cause I didn't have medical insurance for that ( I really did though). Dad took me home, but then ended up taking me back to the hospital. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital having had my shunt replaced.

Within a few days, I was released to go home. Once home, I still wasn't feeling well, and ended up back in the hospital, apparently, the new shunt had gotten infected. I was re-admitted and they took the new shunt out. In order to get the infection to clear, I had to have small drains (to the outside) put in my head to drain the cerebral spinal fluid and the infection. I was in the hospital for the entire month of December of that year. Once the infection was cleared, and I had yet another shunt placed, I was allowed to go home again.

Following this experience, I got on a chat group I was in at the time to weeny whine about my experience, after all, this was my 4th revision in my lifetime. Soon after I posted, a young lady responded and told me about her sister who had Spina Bifida and hydrocephalus like myself. Her sister was only 20something and had had 20+ revisions. After hearing/reading about this young lady's sister, I felt like my problem were minor compared to her and probably to many others. I am not trivializing what happened to me, but it did cause me to think twice about things that I might get mad or upset about. Things could always be worse. Since this experience, I have learned to be thankful for every day.

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