My Near Death Complications After VP Shunt Surgery

My scary VP Shunt Complication story. How I almost died.

If you read The Birding Trip That Changed My Life, you know how calm I was through the whole thing — the diagnosis, the “reroof it like a house” conversation, even the surgery itself. I genuinely wasn’t scared.

I say all that so you understand why October 9th, 2025, caught me so off guard. I thought the hard part was already behind me. It wasn’t.

A Morning That Felt Wrong Before Anything Happened

I woke up around 7 AM that day feeling tired. Not groggy-tired, but genuinely exhausted — and that alone was enough to tell me something wasn’t right. I’d slept more than eight hours. There was no reason for my body to feel like that.

I live mostly on my own, so the first thing I did was go downstairs, lock the kitchen door from the inside, and put the key on the windowsill — where someone outside could reach it if they needed to get to me. It’s a strange, almost eerie thing to do, looking back. But in the moment, it just felt practical. A precaution, nothing more.

It wasn’t until after I’d done that, that I remembered my daughter was actually in the house with me. I’d genuinely forgotten she was there — which tells you something about the state I was already in, even if I didn’t recognize it yet.

I went to her room and told her I wasn’t feeling well — headache, nausea, tired. She asked what was going on, and the two of us agreed: we needed to see a doctor. She called the same friend who had driven me to my original hospital appointment months earlier.

And then, oddly, life just continued as normal for a little while. I showered without any trouble. I had breakfast. By the time I was done eating, my friend was already outside, waiting to drive me in.

I remember leaving the house. I remember saying goodbye to my security guard. I remember driving less than a kilometer.

That’s the last thing I remember for three days.

What My Daughter Saw That I Didn’t

Everything I know about what happened next, I know because my daughter told me afterward. I have no memory of any of it.

According to her, I started convulsing in the car. My friend made the call to drive to the nearest hospital instead of the one 40 kilometers away where I’d originally had my surgery. When we arrived, the medical team tried to resuscitate me — and at some point, I lost my heartbeat entirely. I was flatlining. My daughter has told me she genuinely prepared herself for the worst.

I share that not for shock value, but because I think it matters that you understand what she carried that day, while I carried nothing — because I wasn’t conscious for any of it.

So, in total, there were three hospitals involved that day: the nearest one, where I first flatlined; the one they referred me to, still on October 9th, where I was stabilized; and finally my original surgery hospital, 40 kilometers away, where I’d end up staying from October 9th all the way through October 16th.

There were complications with the hospital system layered on top of everything else — the kind of frustrating logistics that happen everywhere, in every country, when an emergency needs a referral to another facility. It added stress in a moment that already had more than enough of it.

My Heartfelt Gratitude – Family, Friends, Medics, All!

But here’s what matters more than the bureaucracy: I am alive today because of the people around me that day. The medical teams and administrators at both hospitals who worked to stabilize me. The ambulance driver who pushed through traffic and doubled back for paperwork without ever losing focus on getting me there.

My friend, who drove me in and stayed through all of it. My daughter, who never left my side and held together far more than any daughter should have to. My friends who paid my bills so that my people could be allowed to leave the first hospital.

To every single one of them — thank you. My gratitude for that day belongs to all of you.

My daughter tells me I woke up briefly at that second hospital, looked around at everyone’s faces, and laughed. Apparently I asked, “Why does everyone look so worried?”

I have zero memory of saying that. Not one flicker.

Waking Up On The Twelfth

From the second hospital, I was put under heavy sedation and transported to that third, original hospital. I have fragments from the journey — hearing the ambulance driver, frustrated, telling people on the road to clear out because it was an emergency. Then unconsciousness again.

At one point, since my daughter didn’t know the route to my usual hospital, the ambulance driver asked me directly if the hospital we were at was the right one. I apparently opened my eyes, saw the hospital’s logo, told him no, gave him the correct name, and went straight back under.

I don’t remember any of that either. My daughter told me about it after.

I woke up fully on October 12th, on oxygen, with my daughter in the room, and remained there under care until I was finally discharged on October 16th.

What Actually Happened

The doctors told me I’d had an infection. To this day, I don’t know exactly what kind — it was never fully explained to me, just “an infection.” They put me on a heavy course of antibiotics, and kept extending it every time I went back for review, which for a while was happening every month. All in all, I was on antibiotics for about three months.

They also put me back on Keppra, an anti-seizure medication I’d actually been taken off of because my recovery from the original surgery had gone so smoothly. Apparently, that confidence was premature. I’m still on it today.

Since that October, I haven’t had another complication like it. What I do have now are small, ongoing adjustments — certain pillows that don’t agree with my head anymore, a bed that isn’t quite as comfortable as it used to be. Nothing dramatic. Just the quiet, everyday work of learning what my body needs now, and adapting to it.

Looking Back

I went into my original surgery calm and clear-headed, and came out the other side thinking the hardest part was over. October 9th taught me that recovery isn’t always a straight line — sometimes it circles back on you when you least expect it, on a morning that starts out simply feeling tired.

What stays with me most isn’t the flatlining, or the antibiotics, or even the Keppra. It’s the image of my daughter, watching all of this happen to me while I was somewhere else entirely — and me waking up in the middle of it all, looking at her worried face, and laughing.

I still don’t remember that moment. But I like that it happened. Even unconscious, some part of me was still looking for the light in it.

If you’ve ever had someone else carry the hardest part of your story for you — a moment you don’t even remember, but they’ll never forget — I’d love to hear about it in the comments.