Heather -

You sound like me for the past 7-8 months or so. I just had a programmable shunt put in because I was having pressure problems. This was my 2nd revison - EVER. My last shunt was a medium-low pressure valve and I had that since I was at least 4 or 5 yrs old. I'm 29 now. My neurosurgeon first sent me to a neurologist when I came to him with the headache problem because none of the usual over the counter stuff was working for me. The neurologist put me on Imitrex and Topamax, and neither of them really gave me any relief. The Topamax was supposed to stop the headaches from coming on, but it didn't. Imitrex I took like candy and STILL didn't work.

My neurosurgeon finally put the new shunt in on August 18th and I've had NO headaches since. We came to the conclusion that the old shunt was not working to its potential. So now, I have 2 shunts because the old one had A LOT of scar tissue around it from being there so long and never worked on, so my neurosurgeon was worried I'd have a brain hemmorhage if he tried to pull it out, as he originally planned. So, both of the shunts I believe are working together...we still have to tweak the settings on my programmable a little, but so far so good. My hope is to be able to turn off the old shunt completely and just let the new one carry the full load someday...

I feel really good now! I would try the neurologist meds increase just to see if that helps at all, maybe try different meds, but if after a few months, it's not working, I'd get on the neurosurgeon's case because your shunt may not be working properly.

Kathi