[Magdalen] Shunt Surgery

[Christopher Hart]

Dear Pub Friends,

My wife, Lisa, was born with hydrocephalus and has had since childhood a
shunt to relieve the excess fluid in her brain. Like many medical devices
shunts can and do wear out and time also finds the medical community making
improvements in treatment. About three weeks ago her neurosurgeon placed a
new type of programmable valve into her existing shunt to enable better
control of her fluid which was draining too much. This sort of valve did
not exist when she had her last shunt implanted. The valve was placed into
her abdomen near a rib to avoid surgery at or near her head. Unfortunately,
it became disconnected from the tubing and she was leaking cerebro-spinal
fluid through the incision at an alarming rate. I took her to the emergency
room yesterday when I suspected what was happening and the neurosurgeon who
examined her (her surgeon's associate) confirmed my layman's suspicion.

​The upshot of this is that she now has her shunt connected to an external
ventricular device to control and monitor the flow and will be ​having a
whole new shunt installed tomorrow if all goes as planned. This is pretty
major surgery, but she has a very good surgeon so we have high hopes for
the outcome. If all is well she may come home as soon as Wednesday, but
will no doubt have a significant period of recovery to follow. Your prayers
and good wishes are, of course, welcome and desired, both for her and for
me as I deal with everything. After eleven hours in or around the ER and
then ICU (following transfer from one hospital to another) I'm happy to say
that I did not reach for a drink which certainly would have been my default
action in the past.
-- 

Christopher Hart

List Mail Address: cervus51 at gmail.com
Personal Mail: cervus at veritasliberat.net
Twitter: @cervus51