My Brain Does Not Like Me
This is not the way I want to start this category, but life doesn’t always allow it.
A quick synopsis of my history. In 2007 I suddenly lost most of my hearing in my left ear. I developed vertigo which made me walk around like a drunken sailor. Then there was the falling down suddenly which was tons of fun. I figured I had some raging ear infection. I went to see an ENT doctor. They did an MRI of my brain, just as a precaution. The doctor calls me late one afternoon in a panic with the results of my MRI, “Uggg… you have an Arachnoid cyst, I don’t know what it is but you have to see a neurosurgeon immediately”. So I’m in a panic now! I see the Neurosurgeon a few days later. Basically what was going on was that this cyst, which is located in the back of my brain, had filled up with so much Cerebral Fluid that it was pushing my brain towards the front of my head causing all these problems. The fix for this was to install a Ventriculoperitoneal shunt (We’ll call it VP shunt for short). No big deal says the neurosurgeon.
So that journey begins. It has been a wild road. I missed months and months of work, I landed in the hospital numerous times as well as jail because of it. VP Shunts work great for 90+% of the people but I’m one of the lucky 10% that has experienced just about every complication known. I must have done something really evil in my last life. I’ll go into greater detail about this later in another post
So yesterday, I’m at work and my abdominal area starts to hurt. It’s the kind of pain that you get when you’ve done way to many sit up’s, except it doesn’t go away, basically constant muscle cramping, but bad. I’m talking about this with my co workers and I’m telling them what I think is going on. As I’m talking, I’m rubbing my stomach and I feel this lumpy thing. I decide to go into the bathroom to take a better look in the mirror. I’m in the bathroom, pulling up my shirt examining myself and notice that this lump looks and feels like my distal catheter in my peritoneal cavity. Shit! It’s worked it’s way into a funky position causing me all this pain and discomfort. This has happened before, but it usually only lasts a few hours and if I massage the area I can usually move it out of the area causing the discomfort. For those of you not familiar with the peritoneal cavity, it’s basically a sack filled with fluid that holds your stomach intestines, etc. The catheter just floats around in there willy nilly and the excess cerebrospinal fluid drains in there so the body can reabsorb it. My rubbing is not working this time and the pain is more intense.
My son comes home last night, looks at me and says” pops, why is your neck all red?. I’m like huh?? I look in the mirror and sure as shit it’s my catheter. It’s all red and inflamed where they tied to down to my collar bone. Shit!!! I’m infected!!!!
It was very difficult sleeping last night. I could feel my stomach muscles vibrating and gyrating. They eventually calmed down but every time I moved around….. Ohhhhh.. the pain.. It sucks to be me.
So I’m writing this while I’m waiting for my neurosurgeons office to open. Why I don’t know. I know he’s going to tell me to go to the emergency room, but I’m trying to save the $50.00 co-pay.
Well, the office is open now. It’s time to begin this new adventure.
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Well, I’m back from the Emergency Room. It was the usual emergency room adventure. I was in and out under five hours. They did the usual, CT scan of the brain, x-rays of my catheter and blood tests.
5 hours and 50 bucks later, the outcome is………. You have inflammation around the catheter but we don’t know why. Well just great. I walked out of the ER with the same information I had when I went in.
In all fairness, I understand what he was saying. It’s not uncommon for this to happen to someone that just had a VP shunt installed, usually after the first six months your free and clear. It is extremely rare for this to happen two years out. The ER doctor conferred with my neurosurgeon. The consensus is, if it doesn’t clear up in a week, I get hospitalized. If the pain increases, I get hospitalized. I don’t even want to think about that.
So Light a candle for me. I have a one in three chance of staying out of the hospital.
What ever it was is gone. I saw my neurosurgeon and he told me to grow some balls next time. “Did you have a fever?”.. No… “well then it wasn’t infected”… Oh well, I guess I am a hypochondriac
I can’t argue with that.. Oh so many secrets