A lesson in our new life...

So yesterday Katana reached 5 weeks with no severe headaches. She has started to complain of little headaches if she lays down flat to long (more than about 30 min). When I say little headaches I mean she looks at me and says "Mom my head hurts." Then she goes back to doing what ever it is she was doing. So we started trying to figure out what is causing these little headaches. My first thought was sinus junk that has been going around, but then I realized it they were only showing up when she was laying flat. So we tried elevating her head when she is laying down to see if maybe she was stopping her shunt when she was laying flat which was causing pressure to build up. We have tried having her sleep on her bean bag the last few days and that has sent these little headaches packing. So while I can't say that she is 100% headache free I can say that she is still doing so much better than before her shunt replacement. These new headaches are nothing compared to what she had with her old shunt. She has no light sensitivity, no noise sensitivity, and no nausea or vomiting. These headaches didn't stop her and put her in bed half the day. They didn't make her cry and didn't make her curl up in ball and hide in a dark room. They don't interfere with her being a normal kid.

After spending some time thinking about these headaches I realized that we really don't know how Katana functions with a properly working shunt. They think that Katana's shunt had been broken since 2008, when her ventricles were first noted to be "slit-like" (or in layman term smaller than they should be). In 2008 Katana was 2 and had just started to talk. So we have no idea what her body does with a shunt that works. It can be normal for some people with hydrocephalus to not be comfortable lying flat. So for all we know this is Katana's normal. Which I will gladly take over the hell we have been through the last 4 years.

So I guess we have a lot of lesson to learn now that Katana has a working shunt. She is all of a sudden a typical 5 (almost 6) year old. She goes 100 miles an hour from the second she gets out of bed until she crashes at bedtime. She has a ton of energy, a smile on her face all the time, and finally she is not having constant pain. I honestly don't think we all realized how much her shunt was affecting her life. Her valve had been broken for so long that we had become accustomed to her being in pain all the time. Now she rarely complains of any type of pain unless she lays flat for to long. She is just a totally different little girl than she was 6 weeks ago. She is so full of life!! I love our new life!! Her being a typical kid is worth all the insanity it causes me.