Living with Hydrocephalus has been a challenging one. Most times I wake up with headaches and most times body pain.
I did a shunt replacement for the Hydrocephalus on March 2 last year at Obafemi Awolowo Teaching Hospital in Ile-Ife. I remember when the surgery was done, a lot of doctors were inside the theatre. It was as if I was watching a movie, and then I remembered a movie titled “The Good Doctor”.
Whenever a surgery was to be done in that movie and the surgery requires lots of senior doctors, they’re always very much inside the theatre. So seeing the number of doctors inside that day surprised me a lot.
Well, I wouldn’t know if another set of doctors joined after I was put to sleep because the surgery was about to begin. The next thing I remembered after I woke up was that the doctors were already gone, so I was left with a nurse and as at that time, we were waiting for the ambulance to come pick us up.
When we got back into the ward, I was attended to and I had a catheter on and it was removed the following day. Five days after I was to be discharged from the hospital, a doctor came over and he said we should go and do a test for them to see if the shunt was already visible, because the doctor said once it’s already visible, that would determine if were going home that day.
So my parents and younger sister went with me, and after it was done. We went back to the ward and he saw the result and he said we were free to go home.
After we got home, after a while, I started doing physiotherapy, so as to regain my strength back. I must say that it wasn’t easy, even till now. Doing physiotherapy is still painful.
After we got to home, I wasn’t able to do anything on my own. My mum would bath for me and dress up for me. I couldn’t do anything on my own. Whenever I want to ease myself, they (family members) would help me and I was still using diapers to sleep at night because I still couldn’t stand up and most times, I would urinate on my body before I tell my mum that I wanted to ease myself.
It went on like that for a while and the physiotherapy helped a lot and it still does. I eventually started bathing on my own, and most times I dress up myself, that’s if the dress is light for me to wear on my own and if it is tight, my mum or sisters will help me to wear my clothes.
Up till now, I still crawl to the bathroom. I must say that depending on my family members to do some things can be tiring.
Above all, I am grateful to God for He is the reason that I’m still alive. Just like a saying that says regardless of the Hydrocephalus, “There is hope for a living dog than a dead lion”. So I am certain that I will overcome all these challenges.
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