Post Op Right Side Weakness

Symptoms and Treatments
1

Good Day Everyone!

I'm almost 7 weeks post-op. Headaches have subsided. I am having a lot of a nausea when turning my head right/left and left/right when doing some exercises in PT and when I am in a car, I get nausea when going around corners so I can't drive yet. My Neurologist said this should go away in time.

I am still out of work and will return on 2/16.

One of the biggest issues that I faced (and still face) is that after surgery my right leg and right hand lost a lot of strength.

When I went to see the NS on 1/19 and came in with a walker, he said, "What's this?" I told him what has been going on and he seemed annoyed....not at me, I am pretty sure that none of this information was communicated to him by one of his new residents (I told the therapist at the hospital that walked w/ me with a walker and helped me "walk" up the stairs).

Hey, we all make mistakes so I asked my physical therapist to re-send her initial eval because the NS put "patient has subjective right sided weakness."

I went to see my Neurolgist locally this past Thursday and he said, "You know what 'subjective' means?" I said, "Yes, it's as if he doesn't believe that I have it because he didn't see it for himself or wasn't told about it." I told my Neurologist that I told the therapist at the hospital before I was discharged and others what was going on and to me I doubt it was told to the NS (based upon his reaction to my walker and my response).

So I'm going to request a copy of the Operative report because the Neurologist said that he thinks that maybe with the NS having to remove more tissue than anticipated, my Cerebellum may have been affected. The NS said that "everything was worse than what the films showed when we got in there." When I was opened up, the brain tissue wasn't the normal grey in color, apparently it was bright white and was blocking about 99% of the cerebrospinal fluid.

So, all that to ask, has anyone who went through surgery experienced any weakness like this (right or left sided) or is this just one of those random cases?

I didn't get a chance to have an in depth discussion w/ the NS because he was in and out and the 3rd or 4th year resident was in there taking notes and he was surprised at what I was telling him.

When I follow up on March 2nd I will have a in depth talk because I was still a little out of it on medications (which I'm off of now).

Thanks for your time and help.

2

Thanks Rebecca.

I was able to obtain a copy of my Operative Report - interesting to note that the NS found a "dense posterior arachnoid scar." He had to dissect it up to the inferior fourth ventricle. The NS did say that when he got in there, "it was worse than what the MRI films showed."

I didn't know about this arachnoid scar and they did send a portion of it to pathology however I didn't get any word back on what the findings were. It's been since 12/17 so I'm guessing it is nothing to be alarmed about.

I'm just wondering if this had any part to play in what's been going on along w/ the electro-cautery reduction of the cerebellar tonsils. I do have a message into the PA to the NS about this.

3

Hello sorry to hear that yes I did have my surgery a month ago and I did experience very bad headache, pain on my right leg for about a week the nerosurgeon keep telling me to eval any signs of leak then I noticed 8 days after the surgery had to go through second surgery to have a VP shunt placement to drain the excess fluid made by my body and felt much better the leg pain went away and it was filled with pressure and compressing my spine on my mid back had extreme pain no pain medication works not I feel so much better the incision pain and all getting better so ask your neurosurgeon to check if the pressure is build up mine as well all fluid was blocked had to shrink the cerebellum tonsil but the surgeon is a brain and spin specialist he knows his thing very well and very satisfied with his work and he put me in ICU for 3 day for very close evaluation since he work on my brain tonsil to see if I develop any weakness or problem so they been checking my nero every 4 hour for 3 day. So get all the nurses eval and report on your first and second day eval and did they do CT scan 12hr after your surgery to see any problem they did for me and they showed me everything is in place except some expected edema around the decompression and the doctor gave very very specific instruction how to handle me to protect any nerve and muscle damage around the surgery so find out when they did wrong and it will be reversed since it is not a chronic condition. wish you good luck and all our body is different so this is may be the healing process.

Be strong congrats for successful surgery we did it we going to put our hope on getting better,