So what is the driving factor for me to donate my 40th birthday? … well of course it is personal.

Our daughter Miss K who is almost five has hydrocephalus, some of you may know already and some of you may not. It doesn’t define her or us as a family from an outsiders point of view we are just everyday people doing everyday things.

Just before her third birthday, Miss K had neurosurgery and an Endoscopic Third Ventriloscopy was performed to help her Cerebral Spinal Fluid flow better through her brain. She has a skinny tube that doesn’t perform maybe as well as it should.

How did we find out she had congenital Hydrocephalus? Well she got Enterovirus 71  (the yucky strain of hand foot and mouth) the year before from daycare and we were in hospital for five days. Enterovirus 71 can lead to Viral Meningitis so the doctors wanted to lumbar puncture her to be sure. Like all kids having lumbar punctures they CT Scan them before they do it, well that’s when they found the extra fluid on her brain, and our journey of MRIs and Neurosurgeon appointments began.

Hydrocephalus doesn’t seem to affect her, as it can do for many others on a daily basis. We took the advice of our neurosurgeon to best address the condition and to date she is travelling fine. She has completed a year of speech therapy and could now talk underwater. She is working hard at ballet, soccer and swimming to gain confidence in gross motor and she is going to be so ready for school next year I hope that school is ready for her!

Down the track who knows what will happen, this condition is for life, no cure, no easy fixes … no-one has the answer to this question, but maybe we could.

The people with Hydrocephalus, the neurosurgeons and the various support associations are working really hard towards implementing an Australian Shunt Registry which will assist Miss K and others with Hydrocephalus to have better information, better research and better quality of life in the future.

So if you want to know more I have setup a website with more information, check out the THE CAUSE page it will fill you in with lots more details.

So here starts the change from being everyday people doing everyday things to striving to be extraordinary people doing extraordinary things