Pseudotumor Cerebri Support Group
Pseudotumor cerebri (PTC) is a neurological disorder that is characterized by increased intracranial pressure, in the absence of a tumor or other diseases affecting the brain or its lining. Diagnosis requires brain scans and lumbar puncture. Characteristic symptoms are headache, transient visual obscurations or transient visual loss in one or both eyes usually lasting...
In April 2014 I was diagnosed with Pseudotumor Cerebri. I was 12 at the time. I was and still am an average-sized male. The condition came on rapidly and out of nowhere. I was walking down the street to play some basketball with my brother and I started to feel like my eyes were trying to cross. I just shrugged it off as typical fatigue and we shot some baskets for about 10 minutes. After that I started to feel nauseous so we went home. The next day it was a bit worse and my vision was starting to double, only looking from one side of my eyes or closing one eye made the double vision go away. It bothered me so much I started to wear an eye-patch. I had the vision for 2 weeks before my parents scheduled an eye doctor appointment. Thinking I just needed glasses or I had simple eye strain from playing too many video games, we went into the office and I had my eyes examined. We were in the office for about 30 minutes before the doctor told my father that I needed to be taken to the hospital. My right eye was almost completely paralyzed due to the increased pressure. I had an MRI done the following day and there were no abnormalities. On the ride home from getting the MRI done the headaches set in. The headache was excruciating and only in the back of my head. It lasted the entire night until I finally fell asleep. I started to hear a sound like rushing water in sync with my heartbeat. Two days after I had my spinal tap done. I was admitted into the hospital on a Friday evening, prescribed Diamox, and was released on a Monday afternoon. By the time I left the hospital my headaches and tinnitus had completely gone away and the nurses saw a noticeable change in the size of my optic nerve, and my right eye was beginning to move again. My vision improved completely and was back to normal within a few weeks. I have had no problems since then. I stopped taking Diamox 5 months ago. I've had at least 6 or 7 eye exams done since it first started, two since I stopped taking medicine, and they've all been flawless. I'm just wondering, since I improved so drastically, what are the chances of this ever returning?
sleep apnea can raise intracranial pressure, and it does tend to get worse in puberty for males especially. but if that were involved you would expect to bounce back so quickly. the other possibility is disruption of a feedback loop. the spinal tap could have interrupted a feedback loop that was maintaining your intracranial pressure at a high setting. it is thought that the ICP presses on the vein to prevent proper CSF drainage, and once relieved at spinal tap then the normal ICP setting can return. with something like that, something else that spikes your ICP could set that in motion again, but hopefully another tap would relieve it again.
anyway, if you have any sleep problems, snoring, make sure to get it checked. if you have a tendency for your ICP to go up again, you will want to make sure you always keep sleep apnea treated, to avoid that influence.
Anyways, I hope you'll check it out since it might be worth looking into, I hope it's an unfounded worry, since it sounds like you're doing really well now and I'll pray that continues. & A few weeks is about the time it'd take a normal Lyme case to clear up, so...
It really sounds like that could be the case for you to me.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22999649
So on the morning of being clobbered with my multiple ailments, I went to the doctor who gave me antibiotics for the UTI, yet he thought nothing of the ticks bites that I told him about. My neurologist, neuro-opthomologist, audiologist, nor any other doc at my primary care doc's office (they fill in for each other) cared enough about my concern to even run a Lyme test.