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Sunday, September 23, 2012

Brain fatigue and neurological disorders

Brain fatigue in a healthy person is when your brain has been over-worked for a extended period of time.Either that or by a decrease in oxygen,dehydration,or poor nutrition.The main symptoms are difficulty understanding new conceptions,impaired memory and slowed reasoning.

However with people with neurological disorders or brain injury survivors in general it's something that happens more on a regular basis without much reason behind it.There are common reasons like weather and allergies but many are not known.It doesn't always have the same signs as brain fatigue with healthy people either.

I can't speak for the person experiences of others,so this is based on personal experience.For me,it's something that I know I've always had because I remember experiences I had as a kid mainly without losing stuff or getting lost that wouldn't happen all the time.I've slowly become more aware of it among other side effects of brain injury/surgery overtime.It's basically whenever something changes where I end up needing to use my brain more.For example when I started elementary school and then again when I started middle school because how different it was.Then again when I got promoted at work from being a carry out for three and a half years to a job where I have to remember a lot.

Like with anything to do with a brain injuries everyone's experiences are different.But for me I know I have brain fatigue when everything that's connected with hydrocephalus for me just get's worse.Examples are memory,the ability to focus and organize,and knowing which direction I'm going when I'm walking down the street even if I've gone the same route many times.It's when I lose stuff the most or I manage to get lost.It's also when at work when I forgot routines that I've been doing on a daily or weekly basis for the last year and a half.

Thanks for reading,and sorry about not writing on the same day each week,with my schedule at work changing I'll try to pick a specific day to write.I might have a guest blog next week but I'm not sure yet,thanks for reading.



http://www.ehow.com/facts_5254993_signs-symptoms-mental-fatigue.html

http://www.brainharmonycenter.com/brain-fatigue.html

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Media views on hydrocephalus:Billy Graham

I'm posting about famous people with hydrocephalus or characters with it whenever I don't have anything else to write about,or when I don't have a guest blog lined up for the week.This is my second time writing on this subject,and my first talking about a actual person.By posting about this person I don't mean to try to push my religion on people.He's just one of the first people I thought of when it comes to people with the public eye who has hydrocephalus.

Billy Graham is a well known Christian Evangelist,and one of the first to be well known with the general public.He started holding crusades and revivals in 1947 when he was 28 and continued doing them until he retired 6 decades later.His crusades are still held annually but now by his children and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.He is also known as a spiritual adviser for several presidents.When he wasn't a spiritual adviser he still had some kind of personal relationship with many others from Harry Truman to Barack Obama.

he also had a friendship with Rev.Martin Luther King and supported the civil rights movement when many Christians didn't.He did a crusade with him in New York City with him in 1957,and bailed him out of jail after demonstrations in 1963.

Billy Graham was diagnosed with normal pressure hydrocephalus in 1992,but it still hasn't been well known in the  2 decades since.His shunt wasn't placed for several years,but when it was it helped with the symptoms of his Parkinson's.It was another several years before he had to have a revision in 2008.Since then he's continued to have health problems,but that's normal for someone his age.Unless it hasn't been in the news he hasn't had to have another revision in 4 years though.

I'm not sure what any future topics are going to be yet,so I may write more on this subject more during the several weeks,and I'm hoping to have others do guest blogs.Thanks for reading.


 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham

http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/2433569/

http://www.billygraham.org/

Friday, September 7, 2012

September is hydrocephalus awareness month :)

September is national hydrocephalus awareness month,which was helped passed in 2009 by the pediatric hydrocephalus foundation.Although I'm not doing as much as I want to or even as much as I did last year,I'm still taking some part in it.I changed my facebook cover photo and profile picture to hydrocephalus related pictures.Also I've been writing status updates and posting pictures.I'm also trying to use this month to start talking about my condition more publicly,instead of just online.The reason for that is to let people know why I act differently,what I really deal with,and that there might be a point where I'll need brain surgery again,and it might be very sudden.

Awareness is important for any medical conditions,and even more for conditions that are invisible.A "invisible" condition is one where you can't tell someone has it by looking at them.You can't see my scars and the only time someone could notice that I've had brain surgery was right after I had it as a toddler.You can see my shunt on my neck and collar bone,but it could be missed or mistaken for something else like a vein.The ways that it effects me are usually mistaken for normal problems,or even just not caring.

Another important reason for awareness is for people who are uneducated or just ignorant about medical conditions.Other than hydrocephalus some of these include down syndrome,and lupus.A common misconception about hydrocephalus that's it's been cured because of how well the treatment can work when it comes to being mentally function able.Also because the treatment usually shrinks the skull back to the normal size or close to it.It's something that's usually seen and made fun of because people think of hydrocephalus the way you would see it on google images.The majority of pictures on google that is tagged with hydrocephalus are other children and some adults with extreme hydrocephalus.Then most of them were from before sixty years ago when the first effective shunt was first invented,and in third world countries.That's what causes people to believe it's cured,and they wouldn't be able to spot someone with hydrocephalus because that's the only thing that comes to mind.Extreme hydrocephalus is also commonly joked about as "waterheads" or involved in urban legends.A well known comedian who has made a joke about "waterheads" is Larry the cable guy,who also helped give a lot of the impression that people with hydrocephalus are mentally retarded.

A personal and important reason for awareness for me is to make people connect my name with hydrocephalus,and I don't mean only think of me for that.So that when they meet someone else with it,or may have it,or if someone else that they known is dx'd with it they will know who will come to for questions and support.I don't mean coming to me and asking questions that they should ask a nsg.Instead having someone to talk to that knows what it's like to have the condition,on top of asking the doctor questions as well.

Thanks for reading,and I'm hoping to post more on a regular basis instead of skipping weeks because the melon season should be coming to a close in about a month.