28 and beyond.....

I was 28 years old and I had gotten so sick I couldnt even hardly walk. The migraines were coming up to 5 times a week....and the pain from them was so bad that it would make me black out several times with each occuring migraine.

One night while driving down I235 here in Wichita, Kansas...I blacked out and wrecked my car. The hospital done a MRI of my brain to make sure I didnt have a bleed in the brain that would have caused me to black out like I did. I wasnt expecting or even half ready to hear what they had to say....even though it explained why I had been sick for so long.

I was diagnosed with Chiari Malformations type I. The herniation of my tonsills was at 22mm. "I needed the decompression surgery done in less than a week or I would die" is what one of the doctors said to me.

I dont think I can remember a time when I was as scared as I was at that moment!

Brain surgery??? wow. I was dumbfounded. All this time that I had been sick and all they needed to do was a MRI and the wreck wouldnt have happened and I probably wouldnt have had such a bad life to this point.

My parents asked when all this came about and after the doctors explained that I was born with the disease and all my illnesses throughout my life had been due to the Chiari....I finnaly got an appology from my family for all the times I got grounded, yelled at, called a liar or looser, slapped, and so many other horrible things that were done to me. I finnaly had an answer to my prayers. All I had ever asked for is to find out what was making me so sick....and I finnaly found out.

I had so many questions with so little amount of answers.

I began doing research on my own after the decompression was done and over with.

I was symptom free for about 5 1/2 months and then all the same old symptoms came back to haunt me again.

The migraines were even worse than before! I was so confussed! Why was I getting sick again???

My neurosurgeon who performed the surgery had done a MRI and said nothing was wrong and all I could think is "god help me...here we go again"

For the next year or so I suffered.

In may of 2007 I stumbled onto a nuerosurgeon who specialized in Chiari...that doctor was John Oro. He proved to be my answered prayer!

I went to see him in June of 2007 and he done another MRI. He wasnt sure at first what was going on exactly but had a good idea.

I went back in July of 2007 and he had a cine flow study done on me. It turned out that I had almost no flow of the CSF and I had an enormous amount of scar tissure built up from the 1st surgery so he scheduled me to have a Posterior Fossa Craniectomy for August 21, 2007.

All the pain I had gone through was nothing compared to the pain involved with this surgery! Man it hurt so bad I wanted to die!

I went to my post operative appointment on October 8, 2007 and everything seemed to be all better.

Theres more to come...trust me.