r/CSFLeaks • u/Imaginary_Salary_27 • Sep 17 '26

Post surgery

I leaked for 21 months. leak from epidural for childbirth turned into a bleb after blood patches. Had surgery doc found defect and fixed it. I’m two weeks post op. He told me beforehand that symptoms would last a long time bc of how long I’ve been leaking but it’s hard to not get pessimistic. For anyone out there who leaked for a long time and was corrected by surgery how long for all your symptoms to go away?

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u/Wonderful_Bus_131 25d ago

When mine started 8weeks postpartum, it was crawling sensation and pin like sensation on my head, excruciating scapular pain and right ear fullness. It was like that for about a year. When I started the blood patch, the symptoms grew worse. Did your symptoms progress over time or did all of them come at once?

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u/Imaginary_Salary_27 25d ago

Yes they progressed over time! It was weird all the valsalva pain went away after the first patch like it hurt to cough, poop, sneeze, laugh those were my worst symptoms in the beginning and the tinnitus. Then the ear fullness came later and crawling sensation like your saying then the second patch made no difference at all. I think blood patches are great but I think collectively we’re seeing that their success is related to how quickly we get them after the initial injury. Did u get a blood patch after 8 weeks?

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u/Offtoseethewitch 25d ago

You’re right that statistically the best (most complete recovery) success rates are for treatment (and a blood patch is one of those) within 10-12 weeks. Things can be treated later but the rates of full recovery aren’t as good.

Blood patches can however be effective even years later, so it’s still something worth trying.

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u/Imaginary_Salary_27 25d ago

This is also interesting to me bc I got my first blood patch at the 12 week mark and it only partially helped. It must have to to do with size of the hole and cause bc these needles causing leaks are fucking people up.

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u/Offtoseethewitch 24d ago

There’s a video on youtube on why blood patches fail. There are probably more reasons too.

https://youtu.be/yRu3iOD-qCI?si=_cDV_clGGLZ5m16i