I got home from the hospital on 22 February. This blog post is intended to explain what happened, the results (and what they mean), and what we are going to do next in dealing with my severe chronic headaches.

I have to assume that my readers do not know all the ins and outs of neurosurgical treatments and diagnostic tests, so I’ve tried to write this post in such a way as to be as clear as possible. When you are a neuro patient as long as I have been (my entire life), you get used to talking in different ways depending on who you’re talking with. I’m used to talking most frequently to doctors, so if what I say confuses you or is too technical, let me know and I can try and boil it down.

As always, please write to me if you have any more questions, or leave a comment at the bottom of the post.

The Recap:

I had elective intracranial pressure monitoring done from 17 February-22 February 2012, to rule out whether or not my shunt or hydrocephalus is responsible for my chronic severe daily headaches. We knew going into it that there was a possibility of the hydrocephalus or shunt being completely uninvolved in the headaches, and this test was the way to find that out.

In my case, there are two outcomes to this procedure:

1) It shows that there is something abnormal about my ICP, which could account for the headaches, in whole or in part.

2) It shows that my ICP is within normal range, and is therefore not a factor in what’s causing the headaches.

What we found out is the second point: my ICP is within normal ranges. 

ICP monitoring is not a treatment; it is a diagnostic test only. My headache levels and frequency remained the same in hospital as they have been for the past few years. We (DH and my other family members who are intimately familiar with my medical history) are not surprised by this because we were aware that ICP monitoring is not a treatment in the sense that it, by itself, would have any effect whatsoever on the headaches. So, at the end of it, we well expected me to be feeling pretty much the same (shitty) as I did before having the monitoring done.

 

What Happened:

I was hooked up to it for 48 hours initially (which is the standard amount of time for continuous monitoring), and when my neurosurgeon (“consultant” in UK English, and “attending” in American English) came in on Monday morning (21 February), he wanted me to have the monitor on for an additional 24 hours. At the time he said this, he didn’t explain things further, and I was happy to stay in for another day (though not ecstatic about it) because I was able to get him to explain why he wanted to extend my length of monitoring. He wanted more data: in a sense, he wanted a bigger sample size of the way my ICP behaves over time.

If you know anything about statistics like I do, having a larger sample size of the data you want to collect is, most of the time, a good thing. It means that the neurosurgeon has more information to work with. So, I could well appreciate the need for more data. My case is complicated, and the more information we have, the better the chances of understanding what is going on.

The Results: 

My ICP is in the range of normal. This means that it is not causing my headaches. They also checked everything else:

-I’m not overdraining, which means that
-The shunt is still tied off, as it should be
-My ventricles are a decent, normal size, and are not appearing to be slit ventricles
-There is no evidence that my hydrocephalus is “active”; that means that the ventricles are not enlarged
-There are no leaks of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)

I asked the neurosurgeon registrar to explain how exactly they know that it’s not my ICP that is responsible.

If I had either low or high ICP, they would have seen a longer run in the data of numbers being closer together, during certain activities like sitting up, lying flat, coughing, straining, etc. For example, my pressure, if it were low, could remain at -1 for 6-8 hours. It didn;t show that. My data shows a mix of different numbers all over the map, but nothing that is particularly high enough or low enough, for a long enough time, to make them pin down the ICP as a cause.

What We are Doing Next:

The neurosurgeon has referred me to:

-Neurology unit, where presumably we will continue to investigate what kind of headaches these may be. I have also been referred to

-The pain unit.

For now, I’m under orders to stay on my current medications, which include sustained release morphine pills (maintenance), Tramadol and Gravol, with Diazepam for sleep (breakthrough medications).    However, since the hospital doesn’t dispense Tramadol, they gave me Oramorph for breakthrough pain while I was there.

Nurse: “Would you like some Oramorph?”

Me: “Hell yes!!!”

It worked much, much better than Tramadol for breakthrough pain, and so when I see my GP on Tuesday, we’ll be asking her to put me on Oramorph oral solution, instead of the Tramadol. For some reason, hospital staff are much less stingy than GPs with regard to prescribing opiates that have a chance of working.

It tastes like crap, but Oramorph worked very well.

 

The State of the Union is that my headaches are exactly the same as they were before ICP monitoring. This is an expected scenario because by itself, monitoring doesn’t treat anything (unless it’s the type of patient who requires the CSF to be drained, and then they put in a special type of monitor which provides for draining off the excess CSF at the same time as monitoring the pressure). This is the type of ICP monitoring that my friend, Alexa, had.

The type of monitor I was on was the least-invasive type, did not require CSF to be drained, and they didn’t need to shave off any of my hair (for which I am grateful).

The reason we’re just in a waiting pattern right now is because a GP is not qualified to try out any migraine or other headache medications on me. That’s what neurologists are for. So, when I see the GP on Tuesday, they will not be permitted to change any of my medications except to replace my Tramadol with Oramorph.