Does anyone have experience with a shunt in their brain?

My grandmother had this...saw lots of dementia, trouble walking, in pain, etc. before

Thought she was on her way out...finally got it diagnosed as hydrocephalis (sp.)....fluid building up in the brain stem causing the issues.

She's still alive and doing fairly well. Think there's been maintenance on it maybe every 2-3 years.

I'd say she's about as healthy as before. Your friend is 31, my grandma is in her eighties...if she's recovered this well, I should think your friend will do better by far.

This is pretty common these days. My G.M. had it done as well with no issues at all. One of my clients did as well with good results. Think of it as putting in a drain to keep things from flooding.

My wife just had one put in. We were in New Orleans beginning of June for the Jack White concert. We were on our way out of town and my wife had a Grand Mal seizure in Cafe Du Monde.
We were taken to the LSU hospital near the Superdome (can't remember the name). We got lucky and an LSU resident diagnosed her and kept her for additional tests.

My wife has had severe headaches for years but recently they had gotten a lot worse. Also she was having some weird vision problems that we thought were just the migraines. There really is only one way to diagnose IIH and that is with a lumber puncture. When my wife was admitted to LSU she had a pressure of 45 (normal is 10-20).
She had an LP shunt placed in August (LP shunt runs from your lower back to your abdomen, VP shunt runs from your brain to abdomen). She has had a full recovery since the surgery and as long as the shunt doesn't fail she should live a normal life.

I would check around though about the surgery, if they have to have a LP shunt I would have it placed using a Laproscope instead of having the gnarly scars and long recovery time.

My dad had very big problems with hydrocephalus. The shunt cleared it all up like magic.

It's supposedly a fairly standard procedure too.