Month / December 2017

by Felicity G

Change of Weather Causes Migraine

Any time the barometric pressure changes significantly, my adjustable shunt is unable to keep up.  It’s unable to adequately drain the excess cerebral spinal fluid from my brain, causing a pressure build up. The result is a migraine caused by weather. What helps is a diuretic that’s able to cross the blood-brain barrier.

I wake up with a headache almost every day. Mostly, they disappear as I go from horizontal to vertical and the built up fluid drains appropriately.

Sometimes I’m not so lucky.  I get headaches for many reasons. Five types of headaches and three different types of migraines makes for an interesting daily life.

I also work out six days a week. Two yoga classes, two weight training classes and one intense cardio class. On Sunday’s I work out with a friend, usually another cardio/weight workout. This helps keep the headaches less severe than they could be.

by Felicity G

Hydrocephalus

Hydrocephalus is a condition in which there is an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) within the brain. This typically causes increased pressure inside the skull. The only treatment for hydrocephalus involves brain surgery to insert a shunt to siphon excess cerebral spinal fluid from the brain.

Few outside the medical community have any knowledge of hydrocephalus. The only treatment for hydrocephalus is brain surgery. Felicity had her first brain surgery at the tender age of nine weeks. The only treatment for her, is an implanted brain shunt. A shunt siphons one pint of cerebral spinal fluid out of her brain every day. Shunts have the highest failure rate of any device implanted in the human body. The average life-span of a shunt is two years. A shunt surgery is performed, on average every fifteen minutes in the United States alone.