Back in 2012 I was hospitalised with a brain tumour.
In August of that year, I posted a lengthy ramble about what was going on, and now nine years on, I figured I should post an annual "how'm I doing" post.

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2012 - The Short Form

Long Form here

A fairly decent sized blob was discovered in my head, after a CT scan, and I was rushed off to Salford Royal, where I spent the majority of the next 5 months. The blob was removed, but left a hole where brain fluid rolls around and causes all manner of balance issues/motion sickness/actual sickness and more.

One of the largest issues is the amount of CSF brain fluid that my head seems to generate. Most people's heads make about 600ml of this stuff a day, but mine seems to be about twice that amount.

A shunt was inserted between my head and my gut, which gathers excess brain fluid and shunts it down to my gut, where it flows happily, away from my brain.

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2020 - The Evil Shunt Experience

In October 2020, Mum was noticing odd behaviour, and I was forgetting all manner of things.

Thinking it was only Flu symptoms, I carried on like I normally do.
I remember being at home, mid-october, and indeed I was coding away making games and daily pixelart and the like, right up until roughly Sunday morning. After that the daily pixelarts and blogs vanished for a couple of days, then there's a really odd blog post on the 27th that definitely suggests it was something slightly worse than flu!!
(I was slightly worried that it may have been covid!!)

But Mum saw me deteriorating.. She called for an ambulance, and had to explain over and over that something was wrong. At the height of the pandemic, the Ambulances/Hospitals weren't exactly operating under normal capabilities.
But they listened and took me in, only to discover that the shunt's tube had all but vanished/disintegrated/otherwise, and that the mechanical part in my head was happily floating around and bashing against my brain.
Oh joy!!

There's quite a bit of a blur, and somewhat of a chasm in my memories.
Mum says I was happily chatting with the ambulance crew at home, before they whisked me away, but I have absolutely no recollection of that, or indeed most of the day or so around that time.
I don't remember going into hospital, I don't remember going into surgery.. It's all.. Gone!!

I awoke in hospital on the 30th.
Doctors kept coming to check in on me, and made sure I was back to some kind of normality. They explained about the shunt "vanishing", not worried about why it'd gone, but the look on one of the doctor's face when he heard it, suggested to me that this isn't exactly a common experience.
They fitted me a new shunt and normality was to return..
.. eventually.

First, I had to spend a few days in hospital while they analysed me as much as they could.

With the pandemic still ongoing, it was mostly quiet in the ward. Me, a couple of other patients, and the few nurses on the ward. Doctors still did their daily rounds, but everything was a lot quieter than my previous experience.
What made things infinitely worse, was the lack of visitors.
Instead, I was entirely dependent on my iPhone, and thank goodness I'd taken that in with me.

Not knowing it was there with me at all, I shot out of bed like a crazed person the second I heard the AGameAWeek jingle ringing from my bedside!
"Oooh, my phone's here!!!" I exclaimed!!

Chatting with friends and family was great. Being able to post a blog post was awesome!

But, boy was it quiet..
Sat in a room with just two other people, my mind started to wander.. quite a bit..

"There's nobody here.."
"Why can't I see people, except for talking on my phone..?"
"Maybe.. ...."
My mind continued to drift into an extremely dark place.

".. Maybe these are my final moments?"
As the texts continued between my Mum and Sister, my Sister declared that she was on her way home to look after Mum.

"Oh.. Well, that's good. At least Mum's got someone with her.."

I was happy with that.. .... ......!

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.. A couple of days later, I was back in the real world again, with only mild hallucinations like imagining the hospital ward had been turned into a market town, and other such oddities.
These fizzled out well enough, and were helped immensely by one particular nurse who sat up chatting with me one long night.
Normality returned, and a few days after that, they were happy enough with my recovery that they allowed me to come home once more.

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Today

After all I've been through, things are more or less back to "normal".
Normal being that I can still feel the fluid rolling around in my head. The hole where the tumour/cyst/whatever it was, was, is still there. They expected it to be filled up again, but that didn't happen, so there's a big area where the brain fluid rolls around and that's what causes the dizziness and motion sickness.
This continues to be an issue. I can't look around properly, can't move my head quickly, and am absolutely terrible when walking outdoors.
My balance issues make me stumble side to side, whilst my inability to glance around make me a hazard to other pedestrians, and vice versa.

So I sit, and I code, because that's pretty much all I can do now.

I'm certainly glad that I've been able to keep doing all of this creative stuff, because without it I'd've no doubt lost my mind by now. Being cooped up for the past 9 years would've been torture if I didn't have my coding and doodles and ALChoons to keep my mind occupied.

Still sucks not being able to, for example, nip to the shops, or even go for a short walk without having to have Mum by my side incase I stumble into oncoming traffic.
.. But it's the way it is, and I'm coping..
Just about!!