Before I get into the story of my emergency room experience, I wanted to share what a VP shunt is and my Personal experience with my VP shunt specifically. A VP shunt is a thin plastic tube that helps drain extra cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from the brain. CSF is the saltwater that surrounds and cushions the brain and spinal cord. VP shunts are placed to treat Hydrocephalus. Hydrocephalus happens when CSF does not drain out of the hollow spaces inside the brain (called ventricles) as it should. VP shunts drain the extra fluid and help prevent pressure from getting too high in the brain. Most shunts have two catheters small, thin tubes connected by a valve. One end of the upstream catheter in a ventricle. The other end of the downstream catheter is in the peritoneal cavity. This is the space inside the belly where the stomach and the bowels sit. The shunt is all inside the body, under the skin. The valve opens when the pressure in the brain gets too high. This lets fluid drain from the brain into the peritoneal space. From there, the extra fluid is absorbed into the bloodstream and filtered out in the kidneys, then the body can pee out the extra fluid. Now that I have gone over all of the details of what a shunt is itself, I wanted to share my Personal experience with my VP shunt specifically. I had a VP shunt placed at birth but it stopped working when I was 2 years old because my body started to drain the fluid on its own I am very fortunate that this happened to me because if I still needed my shunt, this situation would be a lot scarier then it was.
Please keep in mind that this started happening in February of 2022 and I am just getting around to telling the story now. One day I just going about my day and I got this excruciating in my admin. When this first happened I went to the pediatrician at the time because I thought it was my appendix but the doctor had no answers so they sent me to the ER. When I went to the ER, they did an ultrasound and a bunch of tests and diagnosed me with constipation but you could clearly see that my shunt tubing was as tight as a guitar string. I ended up going to a specialist and it turns out that my shunt tubing is calcified inside my body but the doctor said that they could not do anything about it. I am sharing this story to spread awareness and get advice from anyone else who has a VP shunt and has experienced this.
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