normal pressure hydrocephalus

My God, you guys, I'm so sorry for these back to back stories.

But I guess he revealed he successfully underwent brain surgery to treat normal pressure hydrocephalus, NPH, following his diagnosis with the rare condition last year.

Now, if you've noticed, Billy Joel has been consistently touring since he was in his 20s.

He had to stop touring about a year and a half ago.

But it said He detailed having a shunt implanted in his brain on his latest episode of his SiriusXM show, The Billy Joel Channel.

Yeah, SiriusXM has a whole Billy Joel channel now, if you just want wall-to-wall Billy Joel.

But according to John Hopkins Medicine, normal pressure hydrocephalus occurs when excessive amounts of ce- cereb- cerebrospinal fluid builds up brain cavities.

Joel said he first noted something was awry when his balance started to feel unsteady.

And this is a PNI Minute.

Let's talk about normal pressure hydrocephalus.

This is one of the few reversible causes of dementia.

It's really important to identify these types of causes because you can really help a patient out as opposed to going down the road of Alzheimer's disease or other irreversible types of dementia.

In normal pressure hydrocephalus, the fluid filled spaces of the brain or the ventricles are enlarged.

The ventricles are constantly producing the fluid that bathes the inside of the brain and then it actually goes out to the outside of the brain and allows the brain to kind of float in fluid.

And in this situation, the ventricles are producing too much fluid.

The reason it's called normal pressure hydrocephalus is because We also have high pressure hydrocephalus and low pressure hydrocephalus.

know what, though? In a little bit, though, of it, again, it's almost since it wasn't Josh that was running it, it almost felt like it was...

we know NPH is a big fan of the parks.

We're a big fan of the parks.

Maybe it was almost like the parents are gone.

He gets out of the tub and he's got this like the Uncle Sam hat.

And he comes out.

And so he and NPH have this moment where they talk about what are you bidding on, blah, blah, blah.

And he leaves.

I didn't realize that that is what it was going to be.

I thought NPH was going to host it and it was just going to be, you know.

And here's this thing and here's this thing and here's this thing.

Let's watch a video.

But instead, no, it really was like NPH hosting the Oscars or something like that.

But he did a great job at D23 Horizons.

Yeah.

That's why.

At the very end of D23, Neil Patrick Harris appeared on stage as the Dreamfinder with a Figment, uh, puppet, holding it.

And, and they announced, "Oh, and by the way, here's NPH dressed as the Dreamfinder with Figment." So this leads a lot of people to believe that we're going to get some sort of the Dreamfinder back in Epcot.

And this is why I'm, A, excited, but, B, I also wanna pour a little bit of water on everybody and be like, "Yo, chill out for a second." They didn't, A, say we're getting a, um, new version of Figment into your imagination, to my knowledge.

Have they?

Plays piano, taught himself piano.

And of course, NPH is a musical theater guy.

And they must have just, like, discovered that they knew all the lyrics to Les Mis.

Right.

Her mom's Alzheimer's took hold right as the world shut down in March of 2020, then her stepmother was diagnosed with aphasia, and then her dad had surgery for something most of us have never heard of.

It's called NPH.

Three parents, three diagnoses, one daughter trying to hold all of it together, and she's still doing it today.

Nicole calls herself the good daughter, and she wrote a book called Diagnosis Dementia for the exact moment when you don't know where to start.