My shunt was placed when I was 16 months old. But I was showing symptoms long before that, possibly as early as when I was born. But it only became obvious that something was wrong with me when I missed multiple milestones. My major symptoms were missing milestones that involved having to pulling myself up. I was eventually hitting them, but it was a very slow process. My other major noticeable high pitched screaming. But I was either missing the majority of the others, or they wasn't noticeable enough for my Parents to get a referral to a neurosurgeon. What got me my referral was a nurse at a free clinic noticing me. She showed up to my Parent's apartment did head measurements, and got me a referral to my childhood neurosurgeon. It all happened so quick that my Parents didn't realize what was going on in time to thank her. My developmental delays that I had as a infant immediately got better. I had other delays that I still struggle with, but most of them got way better with different therapies as a child. Most of them are normal with people with hydrocephalus, or other neurological disorders. But there are two that my parents were told directly involved my late diagnosis. Those two are my speech impediment, and my hand tremors. I couldn't speak until I started speech therapy in Preschool. It slowly got better, but it got to the point in high school where being pulled out of class was a bigger issue than not getting the last few years of speech therapy I would have gotten before finishing high school. My hand tremors started around the time I started puberty, and hasn't stopped since then. My current neurosurgeon told me that it's not necessarily because I was diagnosed late, but it may have been caused at that age because of certain hydrocephalus symptoms coming back, or starting later on in life. I'll talk about both more in future posts. I'm hoping to write another post this week, about my experience with a lack of shunt malfunction symptoms this week.
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