Hello, this is my first time finding your site and posting, so I hope I do this right. My daughter is 14 and has both a VP shunt in her head and an LP shunt in her back. She has slit ventricles and has had 10+ revisions in her life. Most recent change was a VP shunt replacement in August 2011.

Recently she began suffering headaches every day, begnning in early April. Our daughter has some difficulty identifying the specific pain areas, so there is a delay as we sort things out. After a few weeks we started the normal diagnostics- x-rays, cts, etc. We found the tube had disconnected from her VP shunt, just below the shunt itself. This caused an increase in drainage. Had surgery May 4. Her tapped pressure was a 3 at surgery, so she was indeed suffering from low pressure. They put in new tubing and connected it to the shunt. We have seen an improvement in her cognitive ability, but not fully returned to the prior state- still gets stuck on words at times and oftens grabs in an appearance for stability on her feet. Pain too- complains of headaches daily and tires more quickly. Her time in the hospital after the reconnection/tube replacement was only 36 hours, and we've now been home 9 days.

My question is this- has anyone had a similar experience, how long does it take for recovery- pain to go away and the dizziness. She had incisions at the shunt (scarring from prior surgeries), and in the abdomen for the new tubing. We hoped she whould be better by now and maybe she needs an adjustment in pressre, but would greatly appreciate hearing the experiences of others. She's better since the surgery but not where she was before April.

Thank you in advance.