21 days to go. Time is moving too fast! I can’t believe there’s only three weeks until my surgery. I wish life would slow down for a bit and give me a chance to prepare, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever feel prepared for something like this. The one thing that I’ve found that really … Continue reading
Posted in January 2012 …
Surviving the Down Times (with a smile)
Let’s face it. No matter where you live, what you do for a living, how healthy you are or how many friends you have, life is not always easy. Some days we look in the mirror and say “I don’t know how I’m going to get through this”. Some days we wonder why life is … Continue reading
“So umm… how exactly are you disabled?”
In this blog so far I’ve explained a lot about the technical details of what a Chiari is and how it is diagnosed, but I haven’t yet described exactly what it’s like to live with day to day and how it disables me. To be truthful, I’ve been avoiding the subject, as it’s something I’ve … Continue reading
Under the Chiari
So far, all I’ve done in this blog is rant about the story behind my illness and how it affects me, but believe it or not there is a person under all of this medical drama. I’d like to take the time to write a little bit about who I am, what I’ve done with … Continue reading
Diagnosis Nightmare: final chapter
(Forgive how long this is!) After a long and painful few years of attempting to get neurologists to understand my symptoms, I’d all but given up on finding any treatment for my disability. It seemed that no matter how hard my family and I tried to insist that these problems were severely disabling, no doctor … Continue reading
Diagnosis Nightmare: chapter three
Phew! Things have been pretty hectic and I haven’t had much time to post, but now that I have a moment… on with the story! Where we left off, I believe I had just finished seeing my second neurologist, who had once again given me the verdict that my Chiari was not serious and that … Continue reading
One month today
Forgive my lack of posting, it’s pretty busy around here at the moment and my health isn’t treating me too kindly either, so I’m not quite with it enough to continue the epic diagnosis story in any coherent form. Today marks one month before I go into hospital. I’m still not sure whether I’m terrified … Continue reading
Diagnosis Nightmare: chapter two.
So, where we had left off last time, I had just been diagnosed somewhat clumsily with a Chiari malformation but had been sent off and told to go visit a psychiatrist for the majority of my symptoms. Well, instead of doing that we went to another neurologist for a second opinion. This one ran his … Continue reading
Diagnosis Nightmare: chapter one.
Have you seen the TV show “House”? It’s good, I recommend it. In it, a team of doctors work to diagnose difficult cases admitted to a teaching hospital in New Jersey. The doctors can be cold, standoffish, blunt and borderline irresponsible, but they always get the job done and try their hardest to solve the … Continue reading
Show and Tell
Today I managed to get my hands on a digital copy of my CSF flow MRI (that means a scan of my noggin). The first time I looked at an MRI of my own brain I honestly felt a little nauseated, but now I actually find it pretty cool so I thought I’d share some … Continue reading
It's All in my Head 