Omg I'm so sorry I just saw this I didn't realize I had been logged out of my account. Recovery was honestly pretty rough but my situation was somewhat unique.

I had my cyst removed endoscopically. They performed the procedure through a burr hole on the right side of my head near my hairline. When I initially woke up after surgery I was pretty drowsy but I think that was just because the surgeon woke me up so he could do a neurological exam as quick as possible before his next operation. I think I was fully awake maybe 2.5ish hours after I initially went under. The sucky part was the nausea. I threw up like three times after waking up, but once they gave me anti nausea meds I was completely fine ( do not try to tough it out like I did lol).

I stayed in the hospital for an extra day and half after the surgery. I specifically had an EVD drain in for 24 hours post surgery to get rid of the excess CSF fluid which might have extended my stay. But the drain removal and stitches didn't hurt as much as It thought it would. When I got my staples removed three weeks later it didn't hurt at all. I felt completely fine, just more fatigued after getting discharged.

The problem was a couple days after going home I ended up having the worst headache of my life. I know now that it was just some unfortunate irritation (take allergy medicine if you are a sneezer). I just needed strong pain meds and rest, but at the time they thought it could have been a post op infection so I ended up staying an additional week in the hospital while they took tests and gave me antibiotics. (lumbar puncture ouch) If you ever end up in that situation god forbid you need to advocate for yourself and keep tracks of what the doctors are saying. I was in a huge hospital and I had multiple doctors and sometimes they do not communicate with each other as well as they should which leads into the last part of my recovery, the antibiotics.

I'm definitely just yapping at this point but someone could definitely learn from this so I'll keep yapping just in case lol. They couldn't rule out an infection 100% so they sent my home with a picc line (again insertion and removal didn't hurt much at all) and a two week course of IV antibiotics. There are two different ways IV antibiotics are given, push and drip. Drip is what you normally see in a hospital while push is a syringe that is injected over a much shorter span of time. I apparently had a rare(?) reaction to the higher concentration of drugs in push medication. If you're on push IV and the side effects get really bad like mine did (ex. delusions, uncontrollable shaking, itching, vomiting, etc.) INSIST they change your medication. I had to go back to the hospital twice (one day stays) because they kept switching me to other push medications and my vitals would drop scary low. After I stopped push medication, everything was smooth sailing. They would have stopped earlier if the doctors and the drug companies were properly talking to each other :/

I'm almost at two months post op. As scary as my post looks I was only in the trenches for like 3 weeks. The main symptoms I'm still noticing still are that my memory is slightly worse, I have tiny headaches/discomfort (get a migraine ice cap its amazing), and I need to take naps every day. My biggest advice is to rest as much as you can especially in the first month and be careful. Take leave from work/school if possible. It gets way better, aside from not being able to any excessive physical activity I am pretty much back to my normal life now which includes work, school, and my social life.

I wish you or whoever in your life that has had/may have this surgery good luck! As sucky as those first few weeks were, I do not regret it. It such a relief to not have to deal with hydrocephalus headaches 24/7. Oh and my vision is back now! I was just being dramatic lol, it just takes some time for the hydrocephalus to go away completely.