Media views on Hydrocephalus:Chi Cheng (of Deftones)

This is the first time I've written about someone that has recently passed away. I had found some info about his brain injury, and I was trying to find more when he passed away on April 13th.I decided to put off writing about him because I didn't want it to seem like I was writing about him just to get views for my blog because of how many people must have been looking him up that week. While I have some other ideas for what I want to write about, none of them is anything that I would have been able to finish on time.

Chi Cheng was the original bassist for the alternative metal band Deftones, and played with them for two decades until his accident. Chi was seriously injured in a automobile accident in November of 2008. He had spent the last four and a half years slowly recovering. He had several surgeries and after being in a coma, he was recovering at home and was able to at least move his limbs and he was starting to be able to speak. He passed on April 13th when his heart stopped after being rushed to the hospital.

I had heard about his accident, but I didn't think about what the result of his brain injury could have been. Recently I saw that he had surgery to replace a bone flap in his skull that was removed shortly after his accident. What caught my attention about this was that this is the same surgery that former state rep Gabrielle Giffords had and she was later had a shunt placed and diagnosed with Hydrocephalus. I decided to look more into, and I never found anything about him ever been diagnosed with Hydrocephalus however he did have surgery that treats it. The surgery he had is a ventriculostomy (sometimes also called or referred to as a ETV, or a Endoscopic Third Ventriculostomy).

I don't want to claim that he had Hydrocephalus, but the surgeries he had and the descriptions of what was going on makes it seem that way. I don't know why it may have never been brought up, but it's common that people who to be treated for the condition without finding out what it's actually called. What I do want to do  is use this post to raise awareness for people who may have gone through the same but was never diagnosed. I hope that I can encourage those people to look into it, and find the help that they wouldn't be able to if they didn't have a name for it.

I also want to use this post to encourage people to donate or at least bring awareness to a cause. The "one love for Chi" site was put up soon after his accident by a Deftones fan, and posted updates on a regular basis on Chi. You can even help her out by going to her merch page or leaving a donation on her own page. All the money earned goes to whatever needs Chi's family has now that he has passed, and also the Chi Ling Cheng Special Needs Fund. Thanks for reading :)

The first link is to the "one love for Chi" site

http://oneloveforchi.com/

The second link is the Hydrocephalus association ETV Fact sheet,so the procedure that he had can be  better understood.

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/chiari-malformation/Documents/ETV.pdf

The third is my source that I used that talks about the second procedure that Chi had,the first being the bone flap operation he had.

http://oneloveforchi.com/chi-in-neuro-icu/