Hi guys , so glad I found this forum as i was diagnosed with 3mm Chiari recently and there are so many questions I have.
I was in a car accident in October 2017 and got whiplash. Before this accident I had no issues at all with my neck or any symptoms whatsoever of Chiari.
A CT scan showed I have severe degeneration of a C6 and C7 and acute muscle spasm which at the time thy said pulled my spine straight. I have been having Physio ,massage and was seeing an Osteopath path for relief . I am still having Physio but my symptoms are not going away , I have daily headaches which at times are so bad I start to vomit and have been admitted to hospital twice. I had a MRI and they found a small calcified meningioma in my frontal lobe and that’s also when they saw the Chiari. I get all the symptoms that I have been reading about and it answers so many questions for me.
Has anyone else had their Chiari suddenly produce symptoms after a car accident
My symptoms have started to increase exponentially, and like you they just found mine a few days ago after having such a bad headache i was puking also. Ive been wondering the same question but my wreck was around 8 years ago and i shaytered the windshield wiTh my forehead and for some reason i didnt go to the hospital. My symptoms have increased over the last 5 months but this week has been from hell. I dont think even the doctors understand how or why the onset of symptoms occur if im not mistaken, there is still so much they dont know about this. But like you am very glad i found this forum, i was silent in expressing my symptoms to my wife until recently because i thought i was going crazy. But this site has let know im not alone in this, and that helps… Alot…
I know ! It’s so frustrating , but finding this forum gives me a lot of answers and makes me not feel like I’m some sort of hypochondriac. A few weeks ago I realised that when the whooshing sound in my head doesn’t abate then I will get a really bad headache/migraine which feels like tightening around my skull and sharp jabbing pains in various places. My doctor gave me 30mg Targin which definitely helps at the moment but I’m finding the whole thing hard to deal with as it is starting to impact my job. It’s used all my sick leave and annual leave and due to the time off work that I have been having I am feeling stressed about losing my job which I know is probably just me being paranoid.
When i started to hear the “squishy” sound in the base of my skull is when i started realizing that sonething was definately wrong with me. And when i started to feel like i was going to pass out after looking up, or down at my phone for a little bit i started to worry. And like you i didnt want to say anything bc i too felt like a hypocondriac. But last week i like blacked out for a split second driving, then a few nights ago i couldnt bare the pain and went to the er. They told me they couldnt do an mri “unless my condition was life threatwning” but my ectopia was still there and i knew at that point its got to ve CM. Im supposed to see my pcp tomorow and then get reffered to a nuerologist. But the thing I find most difficult is trying to explain all of these symptoms and neurological symptoms to somebody that doesn’t quite understand it or hasn’t gone through it
I’ve also recently started to feel extremely tired all the time even when I take my adderal which is the medicine that I used for my ADHD and to give me some energy but even when taking that I feel exhausted like I haven’t slept and yes it is very frustrating it’s like all of these symptoms are starting to appear within a few weeks time and it’s pretty scary I actually have a friend from high school I found out that had it also and she supposed to call me tonight and talk to me about some of her experience and she had the decompression surgery
Since the accident ,I too feel like I need to hold the back of my neck when I look upwards. I’ve been getting sounds like little popping around my neck/skull area and theGP and physio told me it’s just my tendons and is quite normal. But now I’m getting quite loud snaps and then I get a tightening around the back of my head and feel sick
that’s exactly what’s happening to me as a matter of fact I’m actually laying down with an ice pack on my neck right now because driving home from picking my son up from school I had to pop and then I started to feel nauseous as well it’s starting to seem after all the Articles and posts that other people have written that not a lot of people know about the Chiari malformation and that people that don’t know try to usually make stuff up which is giving me any confidence and trying to find a neurologist hopefully I can find somebody who knows what they’re talking about
Actually, the length of time between a trauma and the onset of neuro condition issues is largely not relevant – be it for Chiari or Trigeminal Neuralgia or any number of issues. I have no idea why this this, I just see it stated over and over again. I have TN myself and my nuero was very interested in that time I banged my head and knocked myself silly 12 years before onset.
Whiplash can definitely turn asymptomatic Chiari symptomatic. You can google “Chiari and Whiplash” and get tons of really good, solid info and research on it.
Hang in there. The people here will give you great info and you’ll get it worked out, hopefully sooner rather than later.
azurelle