BENIGN INTERCRANIAL HYPERTENSION (My Experience of Benign Intercranial Hypertension/Pseudotumor Cerebri)

Name: ANITA*S

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Product:	My Experience of Benign Intercranial Hypertension/Pseudotumor Cerebri
Date:	25/06/04 (1326 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: NONE

Disadvantages: HEADACHES, TOO MANY MORE TO SAY

I recently found out that I had benign intracranial hypertension. I had always suffered headaches but in the past year or two they became so severe that I had to come home from work and lie down for hours just to get rid of them, sometimes I would go to bed at night with one and wake up the next morning and I would still have a headache. No painkillers worked. The road to finding out I had bih was long. It started when I went to a spec savers optician to get a routine eye check. They noticed that I had slight swelling of my optic nerve and they suspected that this could possibly of been papidoliema(a very serious diseases of the eye which in some cases can leave you blind). They referred me to an ophthalmologist who examined me and she then was going to send me to the eye and ear hospital to get tests done, a field vision test and a fluorescent angiogram. Due to the increasingly long waiting lists for these tests unknown to me, the optomoligist rang my gp and had a discussion to me. I arrived home from work the day of my visit to the optomoligist to find my doctor at the door now my doctor is not that great a doctor so you can imagine my shock to see him. He had a letter for me and he told me to go to tallaght hospital accident and emergency with the letter. So the following day I did that. after spending six hours in the a and e waiting room I was eventually seen by a foreign doctor who couldn?t speak very good English and he could not understand why I was in the hospital he thought air had a bad headache and that was why I was there. So after another of hour of waiting and frustration with the doctor I was seen by a female doctor who read my doctors letter in which he had suggested that I had bih and she said that I would have to go for some tests. To my absolute horror they informed me that I would have to stay in hospital. So with nothing seriously wrong with me I was in hospital on a trolley in the corridor of accident and emergency. After a day on the trolley
and a
After seeing only a doctor once I was moved to a ward.
There I was seen more and the doctor said he was going to send me for a cat scan. So the following day I had my cat scan and I didn?t find out the result of that till the following day. 4 days and still in the hospital the doctor told me he was going to refer my case to the neurologist. He came to see me the following day and he said that I would have to get an MRI scan done but the symptoms suggested I had bih. You see over the past year I had increases weight by over 2 stone. So I had the MRI scan done which was a scary experience and they said that this showed excess fluid on my brain. So they said that they were going to do a lumbar puncture. So a week in hospital and finally something was happening. I got a very nice intern doctor her name was Sinead and she explained to me what the lumbar puncture was. A big needle going into your spine to measure the pressure is what it is in plain English boy was I scared. So I got that done and the outcome of the lumbar puncture was that the pressure was 37 and normal pressure is 13-18. So my pressure was very high anything over 22 is bih. So they drained off fluid to bring the pressure back to normal. I was told to lie down for four hours after it. I said to myself no way a m I lying still for four hours boy do I wish I has that night I was in so much agony with a headache I couldn?t move. I was so dizzy and I just kept getting sick. The following day I went home and for a week after I was in bed with the headache the only way to relieve it was to lie down. When leaving the hospital I was put on diamox tablets which reduced the fluid thus reducing the pressure and I was told that the main cure was to lose weight so at 5ft and weighing 15stone I had a lot to do. Two months later I had to go and get another lumbar puncture done this time the pressure showed 27 it was down thanks to the tablets and weight loss which I had to do they again took fluid off to
reduce it back
To normal. To my relief I was fine after the lumbar puncture and was able to go home and I had no headaches. Last week I got my third lumbar puncture done and the pressure showed 22 so I am on the border line now. Again they drained fluid to bring the pressure back to normal and to my horror in the hospital I was moved by nurses so again after my lumbar puncture I was still in pain and getting severe headaches, another week in bed. So that is where I am now. I have to go and get another lumbar puncture done in 2 weeks and I am going to lie still for four hours after it and I am hoping and praying that the pressure is normal so my ordeal will be over but as the disease can come back I will still have to take the diamox tablets which have a nasty side effect ( pins and needles constantly and a horrible metallic taste in your mouth which means drinking fizzy drinks is a no) and of course the main thing is to lose weight so that?s my story I hope it helps people understand benign intracranial hypertension some more as it is a rare and nasty disease.

I Hope my edited version is better thanks to all for the advise.

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