What...you want to operate where? Not my head?

Throughout this winter I was having wicked side pains. The pain mostly sat on my right side and the stabbing feeling prevented me from doing simple things like rolling over in bed or pulling my right leg up into our van. Now up to this point, all ridiculous medical mishaps had been due to the effin' shunt. So what do you imagine was my first inclination for the side pain? Yes, I envisioned the shunt tubing wondering around my abdomen whipping any organ that got in its way. Reserving that thought to myself, I went to my family doctor, who has struggled through this whole soap opera with us, with my side pain complaint. When a normal patient shows up with side pain the appendix, liver, or gall bladder are looked at. However, he, Kyle, and me are programmed to go for a Dx of a shunt malfunction. What else could it be in me? After three revisions in two years, the past had to dictate the future. I was sent off for a CT. Mysteriously, other than some fluid collection around my liver my CT looked clean.

So what was causing this pain? Still thinking it was the shunt we contacted the neurosurgeon and was abruptly excused with some serious accusations that I will further explain in a post called "An ice pick to the head: The accusation that I am compromising my shunt on purpose."

Thinking outside the box-I thought maybe, just maybe, my side pain had NOTHING to do with my shunt, despite my past history. Therefore, my next stop was to see my OBGYN. I know this was a normal stop that should of happened a lot earlier, but we were consumed with a shunt Dx.  My OBGYN is the antithesis of all the "Nuero" guys I had been working with. She is calm, talks slow, listens to me, and acts with diagnostic tests(as opposed to hunches). All this, while being a very capable doctor in her field. After an ultrasound, CT, and MRI it was discovered that both my fallopian tubes were filled with fluid. This condition is called hydrosalpinx. She compared my fallopian tubes to stuffed sausages, so I had eggs and sausage in pelvis...sorry...poor joke. Her recommendation was a hysterectomy via a minimally invasive ROBOT...yeah a ROBOT!

I initially pictured a robot feeling me up, but it is more like an arcade game where the doctor is moving scalpels and cameras inside the patient via a control board five feet away from the patient. This seemed similar to the iconic game Pac Man. Dr. Woods is behind the controllers maneuvering her Pac Man to devour my cervix...500 points; one fallopian tube 250 points; my uterus 900 points (the big one).

Now using the Pac Man robot has many advantages. It is the least minimally invasive method for a hysterectomy because the instruments Pac Man is using to devour my ovaries are very small, so there is very little tissue damage. I have four small holes and not a huge across the belly incision like I did for my C-sections. Also there is less bleeding and less chance of infection.

Pre op was a bit weird, as I was used to them prepping my head by putting faducials on and marking and shaving places on my scalp. However, a hysterectomy pre op has shaving, just not on the head and every once in awhile I would catch myself from telling the nurse "No, you need to mark my head so the surgeon knows what side to operate on." It was all very foreign having the other end worked on.

So after have 4 brain surgeries, I thought this surgery was going to be a walk in the park. Dr. Woods was telling me I would have a 2 to 4 week recovery. However, in my warped brain I gave myself 5 days to heal. Yep, only 5 days. Hell, I had Zac Brown tickets bought for Lincoln Nebraska 6 days after the surgery.  No one told me 5 days recovery, I just thought that was a reasonable amount of time to heal after getting major organs cut out of me. As a result I overdid it on all physical activity and gave myself a hernia. After that I did begin to take it easy. But seriously I thought this surgery was going to be like getting a mole removed, so much so I asked if I could go home the night of the surgery. I actually begged if I could go home.and they said absolutely not. This turned out to be a good thing since my bladder took a while to wake up. I was unable to void, so I had to stay two nights until I could pee on my own. And, boy I did the Potty Dance once I peed on my own! Yipee, I could go home then!!!!

Though I have had some little infections and the hernia, my side pain is completely gone. I have learned there is no reason to automatically jump to the shunt. Yes, it should be in the back of our minds, but it should not guide my medical treatment. And always, I learned to see several doctors to get their opinion on the situation because they might have the answer!

The 18th lumbar puncture gone wrong and the calm husband who turned ASSHOLE.

As part of the Neurologist's intense follow-up to my minor migraine inquiry, I was to have a Lumbar Puncture (spinal tap) the day after X-mas. When the first shut was fitted my neurosurgeon look me in the eye and promise the Lumbar Punctures were a thing of the past, and I was to never have one again. This was because they could simply "tap" my shunt and get pressure readings and collect fluid for testing. Wow! that was a relief, but NOT true. Since that empty promise, I have had 3 more LPs. And lately they make this whole vodka-worthy situation worse with the need of a blood patch. In the post #3-If only Edward Cullen were Real... I explain how, the needle prick from the LP sometimes doesn't clot correctly and the spine leaks CSF. The leak leads to brain sagging... I inappropriately picture my back brain lobes resembling old boobies without a push-up bra. Then the droopy lobes cause a mind bashing headache. Now the medical answer for this sagging is disgusting and I often wonder who and how this remedy called a blood patch was discovered. It had to be one of those accidental discoveries that involved a boat-load of alcohol and/or drugs.

I have had 2 blood patches. My first one was explained and executed with sweet care by an anesthesiologist named Dr. Poe at St. Lukes in Lee's Summit. The second patch did not involve a gentleman, but an arrogant short man who resembled Sammy Davis Jr at Lee's Summit Medical Center.

So I dutifully went on December 26th  to my appointment to get my spine pricked again. There was a lot of talk about how they had to use a higher spinal area due to scare tissue from the earlier 17 LPs. I measure out above average at 25ccs. Normal was 14ccs-20ccs. The radiologist drained me down to a 4 ccs, yeah a 4. Seemed like a drastic drainage, and I knew my body would need a blood patch. So, I confirmed with both the ER doc and the attending nurse that if I were to need a blood patch that I could come here to Lee's Summit Medical Center despite it being a weekend. They both said, "Yes." Kyle and I had been down this road and were covering our bases before going home.

We went home and sure enough the Spinal Headache came 48 hours later on a Saturday. Now a spinal headache is the worst of all the types of headaches I have ever had. The pain radiates from an inside core and paralyzes my head with agonizing pain whenever my head moves. It is worse that a high pressure headache or a meningitis headache. So we had to have a battle plan for when this hell came over my head. As we were told we went up to LMC's ER. There, they made feel nice and cozy with some intravenous Dilauded. However, when they came in with a second dose of "heaven" instead of an anesthesiologist to patch my spine we started asking questions like, "When can I get the patch?" and "What is taking so long," The ER doctor only said that they were treating me with the Dilauded and that was the best they could do right now SINCE AN ANESTHESIOLOGIST WASN'T IN THE BUILDING."  I was in so much pain, I really didn't comprehend the fact a blood patch wasn't going to happen. However my mild mannered husband laid into the doctor by asking "We were told to come here to get a patch and now you can't give her a patch?" "How can you run a hospital without a anesthesiologist?" "What do we do now?" "Why can't we call in the anesthesiologist on call?" Kyle, normally being a soft teddy bear became a monstrous Papa Bear demanding answers and action. I kind of liked that rare glimpse into Kyle's dark side.

Ironically after Kyle's tirade  an anesthesiologist was found in an OR and he was inserting a syringe into my spine within 15 minuets.  This whole procedure and the high opening pressure pretty much went unnoticed until I fired my neurologist and got and new nuerologist who has sent me down a whole new path of Nueroptamologist and a possible stent rather than a shunt to treat me.

Today, I had that appointment with the Nuero Interventionist to see if I was a candidate for this less invasive stent. However, my scans did not show up in time for the appointment (this, despite my call to assure the scans would be there),  so Dr. Abraham was not able to apply theory to my specific case. In my Candyland World my shunt could be permanently removed in order to insert a small 2-inch mesh stent in a large vein that is narrowing, which could be causing my brain's inability to drain the spinal fluid.

VS

The stent would then keep my vein open to an appropriate circumference for drainage. The stent would be skull-contained, so rose thrones, counter corners, or bunk beds could not damage it. Dr. Abraham has to see my scans though to see how bad my narrowing is before he can order a semi-invasive test to see where the narrowing is the worst. If I can "pass" both these tests, I would be a candidate for a stent and I could get this efffin' shunt out of my body. However, I also have to be at peace if I am not a candidate for the stent...be at peace with my current plumbing system I have. But good thoughts and prayers never hurt!