Hello Everyone,

I hope you are all well and happy! I am so happy to have found this site, as I am totally, absolutely desperate for some help.

My husband was diagnosed with Hydrocephalus in early June this year, he is a 61 year old engineer.

What has happened since then has been a real nightmare - not of the garden variety.

I will explain our journey thus far, although I am sure many of you will doubt its authenticy as I myself cannot really believe the chain of events. Apologies for the long winded post, but if I don't get it all down somewhere, I am going to implode as I do not have much of a support network, with most of my family scattered throughout the country and not close.

June 2011, Diagnosis of Hydro - tried Third Ventricluarostocomy - did not work.

July 2011 Insertion of VP Shunt into Abdobmen, which 1 month later was 'rejected' by the body. My husband kept telling the neurosurgeon that the shunt was not 'working' and was labelled paranoid and told to give it time, only after he absolutely insisted, did they take him seriously and investigatge to find out that it was in fact recoiled back into his abdomen and was 'free floating'.

September 2011 Reinsertion of VP Shunt into Abodomen, which was rejected yet again. Same as above he was ridiculded, told to go on anti depressants and 'get a grip', went to another neuro who checked it out and found out, yes it had 'recoiled' yet again.

October 2011, Insertion of Shunt into Plural Cavity. (Dire outcome see below).

While the above sounds reasonably standard, it really was not, my hubby is an Engineer (lots of experience in fluid dynamics, mechanisms, etc), when he woke from the last round of surgery he was fine for 24 hours and appeared to be convalescing as he normally does, which is really well. The next day though he was acting really, really weird, banging his head on the wall, screaming out in pain, incoherent and totally disoriented in terms of not knowing who he was or where he was. His symptoms were as if overnight he had developed high level senility. The doctors responded with all of the normal tests, ie. shunt tap (it is working), CSF cultures (all normal), MRI of the neck, as the unbearable pain is at the base of the skull found normal arthritic changes consistent with age.

This syndrome has continued for 9 days while he has been hospital with the neuro (who is one of Australia's) top surgeons is unable to explain why this has happened as the last op was only to re site the tubing from the shunt from the abdomen to the plural cavity.

I have demanded every test available and they have not been able to find out what is going on - meanwhile the man I know and love is no where to be found, instead I have a shell of a person who has to try to cope with unbearable pain which the Doctors keep saying is a psych problem as the shunt is functioning and there is no infection.

It is not a psych problem as there has been no sign of any of these symptoms from previous ops; Hubby is presently home but unable to function other than get out of bed fro 15 minutes at a time for basics, eat, sleep etc, he is also very, very confused and stammering and stuttering.

It is heartbreaking and I can't seem to get any help. Any advice or similiar scenarios/outcomes gladly received.

Not wanting to burden anyone, but surely someone has seen something like?

HydroWife x