Fever/severe distant pain as temporary LP complications?
 

Hi, I'm back!

A few months ago, I had an LP performed (it couldn't find hydrocephalus as the examiner had to put me in all sorts of weird positions to actually get the IT needle into my CSF due to my spine being fairly distorted by other issues). The opening pressure was 30mm, which is a figure that neither I nor the docs trust very much.

In any event, they did CSF lab studies, and the two main abnormalities were traumatic tap (that was an understatement!) with blood in the CSF (due to a slightly bungled LP of course), and elevated CSF protein that was out of proportion to the amount of blood introduced by the traumatic tap.

The night after the LP, I got two rigorous fevers (peaking at around 102F and 103F, respectively), which went away spontaneously without medication. These did not fit the pattern of my normal, every day fevers (which are only during the day and stay below 101F).

Two days later, I started experiencing new, severe pain in my upper back (felt like muscle spasticity). I took acetaminophen/APAP for it first (couldn't use ibuprofen since Marfan's syndrome makes me a bleeding risk to begin with, spinal tap notwithstanding), but then the stuff wore out, so I ended up having to take Vicodin for about 3 days, after which the pain went away completely by itself. A few months later, I'm still pain-free there, so I doubt it was permanent nerve root damage.

I think the fever was due to something that occurred when the CSF and peripheral bloodstream met and didn't quite play nice with each other (methinks due to the high CSF protein, if those proteins were cytokines, it's fever time). I had the "post-tap headache" complex for two weeks (just to show you how permeable the blood/CSF hole must have been that first night!!).

Coincidentally (maybe expectedly!), I didn't have my typical mild hydro-like symptoms (waking up with briefly obscured vision w/headache, etc. etc.) for those two weeks.

In any event, I would like to hear from people who have had similar experiences w/LP/spinal tap, thanks in advance!