Media views on Hydrocephalus: Melon heads legend

Instead of a detailed description of this topic, I'm going to post a variety of links. In some versions of the legend of the "melon heads" are actually children with Hydrocephalus, but in others they are not. The legend dates back to before there was modern shunt technology so at that point it often went untreated. In a way I can see how some of the character traits of the melon heads may have been seen in people with untreated Hydrocephalus, which of course was exaggerated. I'm sure that it was insulting then but now that the description of the melon heads doesn't even come close to most who live with Hydrocephalus. I saw a pretty accurate of Hydrocephalus although vague on several sites there's no mention of current treatment and ways of life, so it could give people a bad description of people living with the condition. Even if they look more into it, or know someone with it, it might make them believe that's what we're like at least in a way, no matter what.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread442442/pg1

http://www.weirdus.com/states/ohio/fabled_people_and_places/melonheads/

http://www.grandhaventribune.com/article/strange-grand-haven/307691


http://stygianunderground.com/tag/melon-heads/

http://hydrocephalusandme.blogspot.com/2009/02/friday-thirteenth-special-mutant-feral.html

Media views on Hydrocephalus: Hydrocephalus and Grey's anatomy (guest blog by Berkley)

If you’re like me and watch Grey’s Anatomy religiously, you may have noticed that, in the earlier seasons, they mentioned “hydrocephalus” quite regularly.

I’ve watched the show from the very beginning, and every time there was an episode with a storyline featuring a patient with hydrocephalus, it made me SO SO happy. This is my absolute favourite (sorry, Canadian ;) ) TV show, and so having such a popular show talk about a condition that many know very little about just amazes me.

The condition has gained a lot more attention in recent years, and I personally feel that Grey’s played quite a big part in that.

One of my favourite episodes that featured hydrocephalus was the one where Karev had children flown to Seattle Grace Hospital, and a little girl named Zola was one of them, and she had Hydrocephalus AND Spina Bifida. Her story was carried out over several episodes, so this made for a season that consistently mentioned Hydrocephalus, and, this was probably my favourite season, for that reason alone.

-Berkley (@HydroChica)

Media Views On Hydrocephalus: Fastball's "The Way"

This is mu 8th post with the specific topic of "Media views on Hydrocephalus". Each one is about a well known person or a character with Hydrocephalus, or someone that most likely has it. This post is kind of different but it falls underneath the same category. Some of the posts was about people I already knew about but a few like this one was because something sparked my curiosity and looking into it I found out it's probably Hydrocephalus related.

I work for a division of Kroger and each store's music is based on the typical ages of customers. So the music that plays at the store frequently might not be played at all or very rarely at other stores. I worked in the backroom for almost 2 years because my primary and usually only job was doing prep work. Ever since I started working on the sales floor again during the last year and a half I've been paying a lot more attention to the music my store plays. It's seems like they've changed the music they play but it may also be that I can focus on the music that I don't work in the front end of the store anymore. The music that catches my attention the most is from the late 90's when I was in Junior high. Most of the bands and songs I recognized right away but there's a few that I had to look up either with the Soundhound app on my phone or looking up whatever lyrics I could remember on Google. One of those bands is Fastball, and this band specifically I never would have remembered them if my job didn't play their music. They had one song that reached the top of the mainstream rock chart in 1998 which is the one this post is specifically about. "The Way" and another song from the same album "Out Of My Head" reached the billboard top 40. Two others charted as well but not in the top 40 and probably aren't recognized as well. Those two songs are "Fire Escape" and "You're An Ocean". The first 3 songs were all released around the same time from their album "All The Pain Money Can Buy". The 4th "You're An Ocean" was released a couple years later in 2000 off their album "The Harsh Light Of The Day". Their 2000 album was the last to be released on a major record label and didn't do very well compared to their success of "All The Pain Money Can Buy".

I've brought up this band and a couple others recently and while most don't remember them at all, I was reminded that there is a back story to their more successful song "The Way". I looked more into it and the song is about a elderly couple Lela and Raymond Howard. They left their home in Salado, Texas in June of 1997 heading to the Pioneer Festival close by in Temple, Texas. Lela had Alzheimer's and Raymond had brain surgery recently and was started to show problems from that including memory problems and becoming disoriented. They were found 2 weeks later dead in a ravine near Hot Springs, Arkansas. The bassist for Fastball, Tony Scalzo read articles about the couple and came up with the song. He already finished by the time he learned that the couple had passed away. Scalzo said that "It's a romanticized take on what happened" and that he "pictured them taking off to have fun, like they did when they first met."

What sparked my interest in the story was the mention of brain surgery. When I looked into it I kept on finding the same article about the song and the story of the couple just posted on different sites. I decided to try to look even deeper and found out that the surgery was to relieve swelling his skull after the car accident. The first thing that came to mind was Hydrocephalus but since I can't find any more information on it I still can't be sure.

Thanks for reading, I've mentioned this before but I plan on writing more about this specific topic again soon. The problem is that most of the ideas that have to do with this subject are ones that involve a lot more research.

 


http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=3701

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-07-14/news/9707140050_1_found-festival-dense-brush

http://www.texnews.com/texas97/coup071497.html

Media views on Hydrocephalus: Miracle in Lane 2

This blog along with several others that I've done is about well-known people with Hydrocephalus or shows or movies that have focused on it. I've written about most of the well-known people that have Hydrocephalus that I know of. Now I want to focus on shows and movies which involve more research, which is why I haven't written about this topic in a while.

I'm focusing on a made for TV movie this week that originally aired and used to be played frequently on the Disney channel. The movie originally aired when I was in the 8th grade (2000). At the time I didn't know anyone else with Hydrocephalus. I discovered the Hydrocephalus and talked to a few people from a Hydrocephalus e-mail group but I wouldn't meet anyone in person or really connect with anybody with it online for almost a decade. Also at the time my only surgery was when my shunt was placed at 16 months, and rarely had headaches. Currently I've been having headaches and migraines on a daily basis but for now I'm revision free still. I had and still have other problems that have to do with my Hydrocephalus but not the childhood brain surgeries that most kids with Hydrocephalus experience. I realized that on average normally people with Hydrocephalus would have to have a shunt revision every 2 or 3 years, so I knew that in that way I was different than the main character in the movie and most people with Hydrocephalus. It's also why I avoided talking about Hydrocephalus with others because I felt like I was a poser because of the lack of surgeries I've had. What changed that ended up being the first person I met on Facebook who had part of his experiences with Hydrocephalus on his profile. He's about 25 years older than I am and only has had a few surgeries since childhood and his current shunt is about the same age as mine. I met a lot of others with Hydrocephalus through him within a pretty short period of time, and the first few were within the next couple of days. Another of those few people was someone who has become one of my closest friends out of all the people I've met online, had a revision free childhood and had his first surgery when he was a adult a year or two before I met him.

The movie is a true story about a kid living with Hydrocephalus and Spina bifida named Justin Yoder. The movie is about how was inspired to become a boxcar racer and win. His family fought a rule that you could only use a foot brake and not a hand brake. Even if I didn't had to deal with surgeries or being in a wheelchair there was parts of the movie I could relate in one way or another. It didn't matter much to me because neither of my siblings played sports, but contact sports was the one thing that I was told not to do so I wouldn't get hurt and ending up damaging my shunt, so I would have to sit out a lot of the time. When it came to his family talking about his surgeries, the struggle to play medical bills and also his revision during the movie I could relate to it because I knew that it could happen to me without warning too even if it's something I never experienced. Our finances were usually tight growing up, so that made the thought of the possible emergency surgery more stressful.

There's a link to a site where you can stream the movie online. It does ask you to download a movie player but the movie should play without needing to download anything. Thanks for reading :)



http://putlocker.bz/watch-miracle-in-lane-2-online-free-putlocker.html

Media views on Hydrocephalus: Zach Roloff

If this is the first time reading one of your posts or haven't on a regular basis, my main purpose of writing is to talk about Hydrocephalus related topics that aren't easily found online. This can range from my own day to day experiences but also includes topics that aren't necessarily about Hydrocephalus, but about other neurological problems and brain surgery. Today I'm talking about a topic that I've written about several times already. I've been writing about people who are in the public eye (including film characters).

This week I'm writing about one of the first celebrities that I ever heard about having Hydrocephalus. Most of the public figures with Hydrocephalus that I've heard about has only been diagnosed during the last couple of years, or I didn't hear about it until the last few years.

Zach Roloff along with his family, are the stars of the Reality Television show "Little People,Big World". Zach along with his parents have Dwarfism, and the show focuses on living life day to day with it. Zach also has Hydrocephalus which was mentioned during a few of episodes during the first season, when he had to have a shunt revision.

Something that I noticed at that and really appreciate now is that not only was it mentioned on the show but his Dad was able to talk more about it. That's something that is normally not mentioned by other public figures who have Hydrocephalus normally wont or cant mention. If it is mentioned than usually there are few details mentioned,or wrong information is given.

I posted a few links below providing some more information, and a clip from one of the episodes where his Shunt and Hydrocephalus is mentioned.Thanks for reading :)


http://www.tlc.com/tv-shows/little-people-big-world/bios/about-roloff-twins.htm

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/hydrocephalus/detail_hydrocephalus.htm

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/

Media views on Hydrocephalus: Roald and Theo Dahl

This is my third "media views on Hydrocephalus" post. It fits well into the original subject that I had chosen for my blog, and my previous posts on the subject are the ones that are most often searched for on Google, according to my blog stats. I have a number of people I've been planning on writing about, and someone had searched for something similar and ended up reading at least one of my posts this week. So if it's searched again, I want this post to be seen. Hopefully it's exactly what someone is looking for.

Roald Dahl was an author more commonly known as a Children's author, but he also wrote adult fiction and non-fiction, screenplays, short stories and also wrote for television. Some of his children's books included James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Matilda. Some of the screenplays he wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Some television shows he worked on includes Way Out, which was similar to Twilight Zone and several Alfred Hitchcock movies.

Dahl was married to Patricia Neal, he had five children. In December 1960, his middle child and only son Theo's son's baby carriage was struck by a taxi. This resulted in him developing Hydrocephalus. At the time there were shunts available for treatment, but it was a very new technology. At the time the shunts had a much higher failure rate than it does today (and currently half of all shunts fail during the first two years).It also had a higher chance of resulting brain damage if they not replaced right away.

In Theo's case his shunt had blocked six times in nine months. Each time he would go temporally blind and they were never sure that his vision would come back after each revision, or how much brain damage had been done. 

This inspired Dahl to develop a new shunt other than the Holter shunt that had been used for a few years at the time, and was the first successful shunt. During the next couple years with the help of Toy Creator, Stanley Wade he would succeed in the development of a new shunt. The main differences between his and the previous shunt was that the shunt wouldn't touch the brain during the placement reducing the risk of cerebral debris getting in and steel discs, which gave the shunt a wider area to drain the fluid.

By the time the shunt was Developed Theo no longer needed a shunt, but for the next couple years after (1962-1964) Dahl's shunt was used in two to three thousand children worldwide. This was Dahl's first major influence in medicine, but not his last. After his daughter died from measles encephalitis, he became an advocate for immunization. Then after Patricia Neal had a series of strokes, he created his own rehab treatment to help her recover.

I've been looking forward to writing about Dahl and his son more than authors, because of my childhood interest in him that in a way continues on into today. My third grade teacher had us read many of his books, At least six of his them that I can remember. We watched at least a few of the movies that was based on his books as well, and then I saw another in the theaters when it came out the year after I was in his class (James and the Giant Peach). I knew very little about Dahl himself at the time, but it's interesting to me now that the author that wrote all those books helped developed a medical device that has kept me alive the whole time. Thanks for reading; I plan on writing more "media views on Hydrocephalus" posts in the near future. But I'll be including some others and more guest blogs from my friend Keyt.

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/biographyandmemoirreviews/7930233/Roald-Dahls-darkest-hour.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3029661/

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/

Media views on Hydrocephalus:Jason Voorhees

While coming up with new topics I've decided to while still post about Hydrocephalus and neurological disorders in general,I've decided to start having people do guest blogs and write more about media and social views on Hydrocephalus.

Considering it's Friday the 13th,I'm going to write some about Jason Voorhees.If you don't know already,he's the serial killer in the majority of the Friday the 13th movies,with the exception of the first.It's rather hard to say if it gives a negative or bad impression because the movie is set in the days before shunts.


In the movie his untreated Hydrocephalus has caused him to be mentally retarded and disfigured.This  caused him to be picked on by the other kids at camp,where his mom was a cook.The outcome ended up being Jason drowning while the camp counselors were having sex.The rest of the movies had to do with Jason and his mom getting revenge on future camp counselors.Sorry about the short post and the lack of details.I'm hoping to get a more detailed post up soon,and posts about other movie and TV characters that are at least believed to have Hydrocephalus.Thanks for reading :)