Shunt Adjustment Coming Up Tomorrow!

Well, tomorrow is the big day!  I get my shunt pressure lowered.  I have a Codman Programmable Shunt, and have had this procedure more times than I can count, yet I am as nervous as if it were my first.  Mainly because I have felt so bad lately and am deathly afraid of getting my pressure too low and making things worse. 

I have not felt well in a long while....just all kinds of unnerving symptoms; from numbness throughout my body, where my extremeties feel cold all the time -- especially when I touch them. And when even just luke warm water hits my body, it stings. It feels like needles are being pushed into my skin....all over.

I also have this strange sensation or issue, when I sleep on my left side and back.  I can "lay" on those sides, but to actually fall asleep on those sides, I will get this weird issue where it's like I'm having a seizure.  I have gotten to where I can feel it start to happen, and I'll usually wake myself up quickly....usually.  And the second I come-to, even just a little, I can stop the process of this unnerving symptom.  But it's frightening when it happens, because I will start "spinning."  I get so dizzy and get so weak and off-balance that I cannot walk for a while after it happens, or I am sure to fall.  And I'll stay dizzy for a while, too.

I started sleeping on my right side, and have been doing that so long that I don't move at all anymore.  I never wake up on my back or left side.  I just stay on my right side, all night, and to the point where my right hip hurts something terrible these days.  I feel like I have sciatica in that hip now, and have to use a heating pad on it at night.  Just so many issues I live with these days, so am praying hard, and hopeful that going down in pressure will help relieve a lot of the issues I live with....if not, all of them.  There are many more, but those are the main ones and the biggest ones.  I have often wondered if I am having Nocturnral Seizures.  Without another sleep study, it's hard to say.

I will post more updates as everything unfolds, to let you know how it works out for me.  Please, if you pray; then pray for me to get through this, and that the lowering is successful.  That it does not yield negative effects on me, but good, positive ones. I pray that the pressure doesn't end up being too low to where I have to be on my back, and have to somehow get back to Duke, to get it raised again. That could be miserable, scary, and hard for me to deal with - trying to get all the way back to Duke when I'm in that state, or condition.  I don't drive well these days, so could not drive there on my own.  I try to keep my driving to only close-by places.

Anyways, fingers crossed, and extra prayers. I am cautiously optomistic. Nervous.....and cautiously optomistic.