How could you mean that....?
Nov. 3rd, 2008 03:54 amUhh, warning for potential medical TMI.
If talk about tubing and references to surgery or implants of some sort are going to be upsetting to you- ... probably avoid this entry.
For everyone else:
I hope it answers questions that anyone may have had.
So, when I got home I told my mother that my father wanted to know if I remembered the doctor saying that I could have outgrown the need for my shunt.
And my mom said, "Yeah, he said that but we brought you back several times and every time you had a check up they said that they wanted to continue monitoring you."
And if I didn't outgrow it by the time I was twelve, I'm never going to outgrow it, because um... I'm full grown. Yeah.
Thanks dad.
( I don't know why..... All I need. Is someone to save me. )
I don't want to bore people that don't care to read about it, so here are some links and summaries for anyone confused or otherwise interested. Yeah.
"This tube goes from the affected area of the brain, connects to a one-way valve which sits outside the skull, but beneath the skin, somewhere behind the ear. It then travels down the neck, and into either the abdominal cavity (most common), the pleural cavity (surrounding the lungs) (alternative), or into the atrium of the heart (quite rare). Enough tubing is left in the area it drains to, so that it can uncoil as the child grows."
Six feet of tubing. Six feet of tubing, and I'm not even five feet tall.
I gag every time I think about how there's coiled tubing just chilling in my body, needlessly.
( I'll never be what you want me to be.... )
"The shunt failure rate is also relatively high and it is not uncommon for patients to have multiple shunt revisions within their lifetime. By 2-3 years of age, approximately half of shunts that have been inserted have failed and been replaced."
This has never happened to me, so I can easily think that maybe it won't and I'll be a rare case that's okay.... and half think "Dear God, I'm twenty years overdue, this thing could fail at any minute."
It took my mother two days to have me, because the hydrocephalus wasn't detected before birth, and I almost died shortly after birth.
And again, several days later.
This is why I always answer "Most traumatic experience?" with "Being born." I'm not trying to be overdramatic and say that I wish I was never born. Logically, I think that's the worst ordeal I've ever been through, and nothing can really top knowing what my mother had to go through during that time... nevermind, me.
Technical shit, and a diagram. Because... that's entirely necessary.
If talk about tubing and references to surgery or implants of some sort are going to be upsetting to you- ... probably avoid this entry.
For everyone else:
I hope it answers questions that anyone may have had.
So, when I got home I told my mother that my father wanted to know if I remembered the doctor saying that I could have outgrown the need for my shunt.
And my mom said, "Yeah, he said that but we brought you back several times and every time you had a check up they said that they wanted to continue monitoring you."
And if I didn't outgrow it by the time I was twelve, I'm never going to outgrow it, because um... I'm full grown. Yeah.
Thanks dad.
( I don't know why..... All I need. Is someone to save me. )
I don't want to bore people that don't care to read about it, so here are some links and summaries for anyone confused or otherwise interested. Yeah.
"This tube goes from the affected area of the brain, connects to a one-way valve which sits outside the skull, but beneath the skin, somewhere behind the ear. It then travels down the neck, and into either the abdominal cavity (most common), the pleural cavity (surrounding the lungs) (alternative), or into the atrium of the heart (quite rare). Enough tubing is left in the area it drains to, so that it can uncoil as the child grows."
Six feet of tubing. Six feet of tubing, and I'm not even five feet tall.
I gag every time I think about how there's coiled tubing just chilling in my body, needlessly.
( I'll never be what you want me to be.... )
"The shunt failure rate is also relatively high and it is not uncommon for patients to have multiple shunt revisions within their lifetime. By 2-3 years of age, approximately half of shunts that have been inserted have failed and been replaced."
This has never happened to me, so I can easily think that maybe it won't and I'll be a rare case that's okay.... and half think "Dear God, I'm twenty years overdue, this thing could fail at any minute."
It took my mother two days to have me, because the hydrocephalus wasn't detected before birth, and I almost died shortly after birth.
And again, several days later.
This is why I always answer "Most traumatic experience?" with "Being born." I'm not trying to be overdramatic and say that I wish I was never born. Logically, I think that's the worst ordeal I've ever been through, and nothing can really top knowing what my mother had to go through during that time... nevermind, me.
Technical shit, and a diagram. Because... that's entirely necessary.