Shunt making noise!? Help?
 

Hi! I have had the same Strata shunt for 10 years in order to combat hydrocephalus, which I wasn't even born with. March to august, I had been suffering a terrible headache, like the ones you get when you are dehydrated or have been out in the sun for too long. The neurosurgeon that we go to each year theorized it might be that my shunt is not adhering to its settings and is taking too much fluid out from inside my skull, causing low pressure.

So, a few weeks ago they gave me a Codman Certas Plus shunt instead, a model that is a bit larger and a lot better than my old one, supposedly can stand MRIs without changing setting. The night after my surgery, I hoist myself out of the hospital bed and what do I hear? A buzzing noise, almost like a fly, but more mechanical. It is really loud, so I don't hear what the nurse checking me then says. I look to my mother, who is there with me, and says "Mom, I think my shunt is making noise," and she comes to listen. A few centimetres away from where my shunt is placed in my head, she can clearly hear the same noise as I do, and she says it is loud, so does the nurse when she tries to listen. They change the setting and try to check that it is working, which it still is.

A week later I finally get that one replaced too, with the same model as the one that had been making noise. The next day after? That one is buzzing too... The doctors really have never heard of it, so they sent me home so they could look into it.

IT has been almost a month now, and my shunt is still making noise. I can't stay in school the entire day, it is really making me tired and frustrated. On top of that, Codman, the ones who produce it, claim that nothing is wrong with their product.

Has anyone ever experienced something similar with their shunts? By now I am really desperate, and it is killing me to see how my mother can't think of anything else by now...