Today was a bad shunt day.  The last few weeks have been the usual disruptions. However the last few days have been particularly challenging.  Today’s entry into the shunt log is as follows: 

Pain on shunt valve at 2:16am,
2:38am. 6:24am, 7:04am, 7:46am, 8:15am, 9:05am, 10:25am, 11:10am, 2:10pm,
2:31pm, 3:16pm, multiple times either every hour or multiple times within the
hour between 4pm-8:21pm.  Vibrations
inside head at 8:22am.  Pain on distal
catheter ( top left corner ) at 8:50am. 
Pain behind right eye at 9:24am.  Pain/throbbing
down right side of neck on catheter at 11:46am. 
Pressure in forehead at 8:23pm.  Felt
nausea and almost vomiting a few times during the day. i.e. after lunch and in
the evening hours between 4pm-6pm.  Pain
in stomach from 3pm-4pm.  Problems sleeping on right side due to clogging in right catheter and stomach issues while sleeping on the left side.  

For me, sleeping on my back results in issues with the type II chiari malformation I have. It causes me to sometimes have balance issues and occasional headaches in the back of my head which go away with aspirin. I haven’t been having those much in the last six months since my shunt has been misbehaving. The balance issues only arise in two occasions: When my shunt is obstructed. OR When I’ve been laying on my back staring at the ceiling and my neck is pressed against a hard surface.  I had an MRI in 2011 and they made me place my head in one of those cradles. When the MRI was over half and hour later, I could barely walk and the room was spinning.  Now when I have MRI’s I ask for a flat surface and a towel to rest the back of my neck on. I hope the shunt behaves better tomorrow. I can only do Pilates so many times in order to calm myself down as pain meds don’t do anything to alleviate my symptoms.  Good thing I have a scrapbook to work on tomorrow.  Perhaps it will be a good distraction.