My poor dad!! He had a shunt put in about 21 years ago. The shunt drains spinal fluid from his brain to is abdomen. If the fluid gets built up in the ventricle in his brian he first gets a headache, then he starts forgetting things, then double vision, then gets way worse from there. He had some of these symptoms a few months ago....he went in on a Wed in Jan to get part of the shunt replaced. He went home. 18 hours later symptoms were worse. Went back to the hospital for surgery 2 on Friday. They replaced the shunt valve parts again. 18 hours later the symptoms were back again. Surgery #3 took the current shunt out and put a new one in near the front of his head. That didn't work. Surgery #4 was to take the piece of tubing from the shunt to his abdomen out to drain externally. Surgery #5 was to replace this part of the tubing. Wow. I went to Utah through this process and helped at the hospital every way I could. It was a long scary week. This is a pic of the tube draining externally.
Julie, my mom and I played games to pass the days while they figured out what they needed to do between surgeries.
Here are the incisions after all the surgeries. The final shunt remains in the top opening.
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