30 y/o with persistent headaches...

[vamedic4]

Hello all...new to this forum but let me pose a question.  I'm a 30 year old male with a VP shunt, placed in 1976.  Have had no problems with it in all this time (except for some headaches as a teenager, but they went away).
In the past 4 days I have started to have headaches, and my headaches have gotten so bad I just laid in bed for a whole day, it seems moving back and forth or side to side makes my head hurt.  I thought I might be dehydrated so I drank water..copious amounts, to no avail.  Motrin helped but not much.
I'm wondering if anyone knows of any problems with shunts as old as mine or can give me any insight??
Thank you.

J.Cork

[Machine]

Hi, I have had a vp shunt since 1985. Have had several serious bouts with headaches and have been treated with narcotic injection and various pain medications. For 10 days now I've had horrific headaches and made too many trips to the emergancy room with no great results. About 3 weeks ago I had some epidural injections for back pain and was given methadone and Panlor SS to use for chronic pain, have had several demerol injections. It turns out that both these medications and the demerol have side affects of increasing intercranial pressure. So what they have been treating me with has made me much sicker. Now there is no great medication for the pain except Ultram and Tordal. We are thinking that this may work itself out with time. They also put me on Verapamil. My shunt is working so hard and continual I can actually hear it. I can't continue to live like this so I hope it will work. Make sure and check that the side effects of the drugs you are taking don't increase intercranial pressure.
This is my first look into this type of internet interactions. I would be intrested in hearing from you but see that there is no email address attatched.

[CCF-Neuro-M.D.-JT]

Your shunt is a definite contender for the cause of your headaches. You need a shunt series (which is a series of films) to evaluate the integrity of your shunt to see if it's overdraining or underdraining and a CT scan to look at the size of your ventricles which will also help evaluate the job your shunt's doing. If all that is normal, an MRI of your brain is the next step. Talk to your neurosurgeon who put the original shunt in. It's possible you may just need an adjustment. The other consideration is an infection around the shunt especially if you're having fevers. If it's too hard to get a hold of your surgeon, then get a neuro consult. Best of luck.

[boobug]

I would suggest going to a neuro surgon or a neurologist to get an evaluation, and prehaps a MRI to see if the shunt has slipped out of place, I also have a data base of over 100 families w/ DWS and HYdro and there children sometimes have to go in for Revisions due to the shunt not drained properly or it has slipped out of place this may be why your having headaches.
P.S. I'm not a doctor just a parent of a child w/ Hydro.

boo bug