Tonight I had to explain hydrocephalus to my 5 year old. She had a bug earlier this week that involved one episode of vomiting, a headache and sleeping on and off for the rest of the day. Now, those three things, especially all together like that, can be symptoms of a shunt malfunction. I wasn't too worried about it because Kevin had had the same thing the week before, and I'd had it the week before that, and she was fine and back to school the next day. But since then, Alison will just randomly complain of a headache. Most likely because it gets her attention, even though I try very hard not to make a big deal out of it. She did it tonight while we were talking before bed and I knew she didn't really have one. That led to a conversation about why it's very, very, very important not to ever lie about having a headache. And that's what led to the explanation of hydrocephalus.

See, Alison thinks that all kids have a shunt. Actually, she thought that all people have a shunt. She was pretty surprised when I told her I don't have one. That's when she readjusted her thinking to it just being something that all kids have. From there she figured that since I'm a grown-up and I don't have a shunt it must mean that once she gets grown up, they'll take her shunt out. And it just doesn't work that way.

She seemed to get the idea that there's fluid in the brain that is supposed to go from the inside to the outside but that in her brain the fluid gets stuck in the inside. She got the idea that when the fluid gets stuck like that it makes her brain blow up like a balloon, but then took it a step further to thinking that if her brain blew up too big it would pop. She seemed to understand when I told her that her brain wouldn't pop because her head (skull) was really hard and wouldn't let her brain get big enough to pop, but it that her brain could get really hurt if the fluid kept filling up the inside of her brain. She already knows that there is a bump behind her ear and a tube that runs down the side of her head, down her neck, across her collarbone, down her chest and into her stomach area. I'm hoping that she now understands that there is a tube that goes from the inside of her brain to the bump (valve) and lets the extra fluid out of her head so that her brain doesn't blow up and get hurt. I'm hoping that she now understands that headaches are one way we know if the shunt stops working and her brain is starting to blow up like a balloon.

We've talked before about how they had to cut open her head to put the shunt in. We talked about it again tonight, how if her shunt stopped working she would have to have surgery to fix it. She told me she did not want to have surgery because she then she wouldn't be able to talk. See, because the only surgery that she remembers having was the tendon release in her thumb and because she had to wear a cast on her arm after that, she thought that she would have to have a cast all over her head if she had to have surgery to have her shunt fixed. I think I managed to convince her that that wouldn't happen.

Things were so much easier when she was little. They just were what they were. Do/don't do this or that because I said so. Now there have to be involved explanations. And it's really hard trying to explain complex medical conditions in a way that a 5 year old can understand them.