Thankyou. Though as it happens, that is actually one of the sources I previously stumbled on when searching. It explains the mechanism of the process, and the desciption seems to fit what I've been struggling with for 30 years, and what the urologists found. But in fact almost everything I've found about hydrocephalus has mentioned 'over active bladder' as a symptom.

It is just extremely distressing and anxiety-inducing to think one may have been suffering progressive brain-damage for many years.

Both because it feels like it explains my past problems (that I've been told a thousand times 'have no physical explanation' and are just due to my 'negative thinking patterns' or my 'not recognising or dealing with my emotions'), and because I still have a lot of disabling physical issues (like seeming to stop breathing when I sleep, and waking up horribly dizzy and extremely nauseous, and having trouble swallowing and speaking as if my throat were half paralyzed, plus that crippling blood-starved-brain feeling, plus that bladder thing is still there).

I have spent over 30 years feeling myself get progressively more ill for unknown reasons, and gradually having all the things that I find motivating or purposeful being taken away (the ability to study, to work obsessively at an intellectually-demanding job, to travel, to get fit). And now it looks possible there maybe _was_ a physical reason for my increasing disabilities all along, despite what mental-health people kept telling me, just that nobody did the right test to see it until this year.

But I just don't know for sure how long I've had the hydrocephalus or what damage it has done. Perhaps I'm over-reacting and over-interpreting? The state of not-knowing is really hard to bear.