Some days are better than others. There are maybe one to three days out of the month were I’m not feeling any pain in my head, neck or discomfort in my stomach.  Yesterday was the worst in terms of head discomfort.  All day at least every other hour I had short spurts of pain on the shunt valve, on the top left corner of my head or some random spot on the back of my head.  These spurts last anywhere from 3 seconds to 2 minutes.  What I found most odd was that whenever I bent down to pick something up or dipped my head down for a few minutes, I would feel sharp pain and pulling where the shunt valve is.  Last night I was disturbed by it.  I’m trying not to worrying too much, however there are times when it can be too distracting.  While at work and this occurs I have to just ignore it.  I’ve become almost obsessive about recording every detail of what I’ve been feeling inside my head, neck and stomach since July.  I have things recorded by the minute.

I’ve been keeping track of my shunt’s activities all summer, beginning in July.  It has decided at the perfect time to act out in defiance at certain times during the day.  I’ve noticed a repeated pattern.  Some days are better for me than others. However, it makes me wonder why when the shunt is acting out on it’s own accord has an effect on my mood. My ns always asks with each six month visit about whether or not I’m having mood swings. Lately, I do have them at times.  However, they last for short spurts.   Could this be the cause of the csf fluid being off balanced and not draining the way it’s supposed to?  The most frustrating part of all of this is I wish technology was more advanced in detecting the root cause of the problem, like in Star Trek when they would just scan you with a laser gun and know immediately what was going on….

A rather loud MRI scan is only going to show if there is swelling in the brain and whether or not my ventricles are enlarged.  It isn’t going to show evidence of what or why the shunt is not draining properly.   I suspect as I mentioned in a previous post what I believe is going on inside my head.  I understand why I can’t have immediate surgery right this very moment because they (the drs) need to me absolutely sure it’s necessary.  I understand this imbalance issue will be resolved in December unless the shunt fails between now and then.  I’m not in excruciating pain, it’s more like when your eye twitches from not getting enough sleep. The twitching won’t go away.  Using eye twitching to describe throbbing and short spurts of pain in various parts of my head is really the only way I think non-shunt people can understand.  I can be grateful that this didn’t happen while I was serving in AmeriCorps.  Since my shunt has decided to rebel yet again, I think I’ve found a way to make it work out in my favor. But we’ll see…today has started out being better than yesterday and earlier this week.