Johnny Ramone's brain surgery

I'm going to try to start writing about celebrities with Hydrocephalus, or celebrities who has had brain surgery at some point. These tend to be my most popular topics and I really enjoy writing them. I have a couple Hydrocephalus ones in mind right now but I would have to more research into it, instead of putting it off until it's time to write. If I'm writing about a celebrity that actually has Hydrocephalus I'll mention it in the title. Although it's always possible with a brain injury it doesn't always happen, and I have no proof with it from what I've read about Johnny.

Johnny Ramone is the stage name of Johnny Cummings who played guitar for the American punk rock band Ramones for 22 years, starting from the time they started playing in 1974 until they broke up in 1996. Johnny and his band mates went by the name surname Ramone, which was inspired by Paul McCartney going by Paul Ramone for a short period of time before they became famous in the United States. Johnny Ramone passed away almost a decade ago from Prostate cancer. So I want to make it clear that even if I'm writing about someone who has passed away that his death and the brain surgery is not connected.

I found out about his brain surgery within the last couple of weeks and decided to look more into it. I was having a hard time finding information on it. The information that I kept on coming across was that he had gotten into a fight with a member of another punk band (Seth Macklin of Sub Zero). He was found unconscious and ended up needing 4 hours of delicate brain surgery.  The best article I found what the start of Chapter 5 of his autobiography. In it he said that he had been dropped off in front of his old apartment where his ex-girlfriend Cynthia Whitney (also known as Roxy Ramone) was sitting outside with a guy he didn't recognize. When he confronted her he ended up getting into a fight with the guy that was outside with Cynthia. He didn't remember getting into a fight, just waking up in a hospital, not knowing where he was. According to others who saw the fight Johnny had been kicked in the head multiple times. The result was a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain, which the doctors didn't think he would survive. Johnny didn't think that he had suffered any brain damage but others saw a difference in him. It did however make him more cautious of head injuries.

He had a take it easy for a while and it took a few months before he was able to start performing again. The next album that the Ramones released was inspired by what had happened, and was called "Too Tough to Die". He had a shaved head when he came back to perform which is why he wore a hat for a while. Thanks for reading :)

http://books.google.com/books?id=dBZlyEn5H1gC&pg=PT114&lpg=PT114&dq=johnny+ramone+brain+surgery&source=bl&ots=j9csxgfA-K&sig=ynuNDes2aeeJIwh3XrmUV5Jli54&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jFi1UunsEKOEygG75YCoAw&ved=0CGcQ6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&q=johnny%20ramone%20brain%20surgery&f=false

 http://www.beatleswiki.org/wiki/Paul_Ramon

 http://razmatazmag.com/?tag=johnny-ramone

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/

Media views on Hydrocephalus:Gabrielle Giffords

Because my last post has gotten more views than any of my other posts than I've gotten since I started writing this blog 14 months ago, I’ve decided to continue writing about the same subject this week. If this is your first time reading I post on "Media views on Hydrocephalus" once in a while where I pick a celebrity or character that either has Hydrocephalus themselves, or they somehow were/are affected by it. It fits into the subject I picked out in the first place, because it's something that's usually not written about or at least not in detail.

Like last week's post (Roald Dahl) this post means something personally to me, other than the Hydrocephalus part. Gabrielle was the State rep in one of the three districts where I live. On the morning of January 8th, 2011 she was shot in the head by a gunman outside of a Safeway north of Tucson, during her first "Congress on Your Corner" gathering.19 others were shot, including 6 who died.

The results of her injury were a shattered skull and swelling of the brain. They left a hole in her skull for a few months after to allow the swelling to go down. At some point during those first few months, she developed Hydrocephalus. It's common for this to happen after any kind of brain injury that involves swelling of the brain, or a brain bleed. When they replaced the part of her missing skull, they placed a VP shunt for her Hydrocephalus. 

Unfortunately the for the most part Hydrocephalus and her shunt is left out when the media talks about her health problems. But it's been done many times before with other celebrities, and it won't be the last. But that's one of the reasons I've picked this topic in the first place. I hope that by posting about it, people will be able to find my blog when searching for public figures and that it will make people more aware of the condition. We can also try to reach out to these public figures, offer resources if they are needed and encourage them advocate others using their popularity.

I remember the morning this all started because I work in another local grocery store. It was during the last few months of being a courtesy clerk before I was promoted. So I spent most of that morning in the front end, and we didn't know rather they caught the gunman or not. So as least some of ourselves and kept on catching ourselves keeping a eye on the front doors, because we didn't know rather or not that the gunman would show up at our work too. All we know that she was shot at a Safeway, we didn't know until later what she was doing there so we thought that it all happened inside the store.

I also never thought that she would become a hero to the other people I've met with Hydrocephalus on Facebook. I knew about head injuries and Hydrocephalus, but I still didn't think that Gabby would have been diagnosed with it. Both before, but especially after the accident she did what she could for people with disabilities (including a job fair for people with disabilities). She resigned last year, but she still has the power to make a difference.

I don't know how much she knows about Brain Injury or Hydrocephalus, but I know she's strong enough and will be able to deal with it. I hope that you've learned something learned something new from reading this, and I encourage you to look into it more. Thanks for reading.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/19/giffords.surgery/index.html

http://www.kvoa.com/news/job-fair-to-focus-on-hiring-tucsonans-with-disabilities/

Rosemary Kennedy's lobotomy

I've written a couple times about specific famous people who have hydrocephalus,rather it's a celebrity or a character. I have many more people to cover in that subject,but I'll also like to bring attention to well known people who have had some other kind of brain injury or brain surgery.Today I'll like to talk about someone from a well known family,who isn't exactly well known herself.

Her three brothers who lived passed thirty were well known politicians, her oldest brother died in the second world war. One of those brothers was John Kennedy,the thirty-fifth president of the United States who was assassinated in office. Another brother was assassinated while running for president in 1968.

Rosemary was disabled from early on in her life,possibly because of a delayed birth depriving her brain of oxygen. Her disability was intellectual,and she had a low IQ.During puberty she began to have violent mood swings that her family couldn't figure out how to control.

Now as we're learning more and more about traumatic brain injuries,we can identify these problems. We can pinpoint why certain side effects happen,and in some cases at least how we can recover from them and overcome. But this was several decades ago and very little was known about any neurological problem. Also  the Kennedy's were already popular figures,although nothing compared to who they would be a couple decades later. So how they were seen were a lot more important than most people,and again because of the lack of knowledge about TBI her family at least in a way was ashamed of her.

In order to try to control her mood swings,her father had a surgeon give her a lobotomy. A lobotomy is basically a brain operation removing part of the frontal lobe,cutting off most of the connections to the prefrontal cortex. The purpose is to help people with psychological disorders. It has become less controversial and more common in the last couple of decades. But at the time the procedure was only several years, and they hadn't figure out the "right" way of doing it. In Rosemary's case they ended up going "too deep" resulting in a much more severe disability, and wasn't able to care for herself, or perform daily functions like she had been able to do before, including even communicating effectively.

I had a hard time finding websites or blogs,either that seemed to have legit information, if anything more than basic information. It seemed like every website I've gone to lately looking for information for this blog post had different information than the other. Usually I don't like to do this, because of how the site runs it tends to not have accurate information. But I used Wikipedia just because,in this case it was my best way of getting the most accurate information for this post. Thanks for reading.

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

importance of brain trauma awareness/research

One of the main reasons I started my blog in the first place is to write about my experiences on how hydrocephalus has effected me,more than in childhood than recently.Unlike many others I've had the same shunt since I was first diagnosed as a toddler,so most of what I write about is about dealing my with brain injury and everything that came along with it.When I say that I have a brain injury you may think that it means I was in some kind of accident.For me and many others,it's actually something I was born with or acquired soon after.I have mine because of hydrocephalus,which is a build up of spinal fluid in the skull and brain.I have a shunt,which is a tube and valve that  drains the fluid.The shunt causes some problems as well,but the neuro disorder and the brain surgery that was done to help control it has effected me too.You can't poke at someone's brain and not have long term side effects,no matter the age.Even if the person hasn't developed skills yet doesn't mean they won't have problems with them when the time comes.It also effects each person in different ways,so not every case in the same.Below  is a few links,and thanks for reading :)

This is a link to a earlier post of mine that describes some of my personal experiences

  http://timothy-landry.blogspot.com/2012/01/neurological-side-effects-of-brain.html

the  next link is for a great source to anyone living  with a brain injury

 http://www.braininjuryforum.com/

the last is one of many hydrocephalus sources,but this one gives you the option of finding people in your area.

http://gabrielslife.org/