Marilyn
My daughter is 28 years old and has a shunt since she was seven, the result of an accident. She had no problems with her shunt for 21 years; yet suddenly in December she began having problems and ended up having surgury to replace the valve, then emergency surgery to replace the shunt three days later when it failed. Then in April she had more surgery to install an anti-siphon device. She called me from the recovery room and sounded great. That night I called her about 7:30 and she was crying, saying she couldn't talk to me. She doesn't remember that conversation as her shunt was failing again. She was in ICU all night and no one checked her; they didn't realize her shunt had failed until 9:00 the next morning, at which time she had emergency surgery to replace the shunt. Since then she has been having memory problems and forgets conversations which she had 12 ago. I think her memory problems are due to her shunt failure. If I were you I'd become very informed on signs and symptoms of shunt failure - you surely don't want your child to have lasting complications just because a doctor (or a well-renowned hospital in our case) forgets to check. It's no problem for them - you and your child have to live with the complications of untreated shunt failure for the rest of your lives.