I would like to know if anyone has experienced a head trauma that either preceded a CM diagnoses or made their CM worse?
My 13 yo had an MRI 2 years ago because of a sudden onset of double vision. The MRI report stated that she had crowding at the foramen magnum but no evidence of CTE. I was told it was nothing to worry about and no follow up was needed.
Fast forward to this year and my daughter has had two more brain MRI's and a c-spine following a TBI that occurred in December of 2014. The MRI now states that she has CTE. Her primary was still not concerned since she wasn't displaying symptoms (which I disagree with) and wanted to do follow up in another year. I pushed for her to see a Neurologist (appointment in January) to compare all three MRI's but from there I will push for a referral to see a NS. She also had a PT and OT evaluation through school and we were told from the PT that they thought the problem was in her neck.
The confusing part to me is trying to figure out if her symptoms are being caused by CM or the TBI. The symptoms are headache, dizziness, double vision, numbness in legs, has had numbness in head, nausea, ringing in the ears, and has lost 20 lbs. She also has been diagnosed with scoliosis and a pelvic tilt. And, this is her third TBI, although the other two they called concussions and the symptoms resolved within a few months. She has been a lot of anti-depressants and other meds but is not currently on anything. Nothing consistently works.
She is home schooled but and has only been released to do 7.5 hours of school a week, which she currently hasn't been able to complete. She has put in special education to accommodate her needs. So even a year after the accident she is not doing full time school at home. Last May they took her completely off of school and put her on a medicine to induce sleep which they thought would help her brain heal. She recently did testing for the school to see if we could get an idea of where she was at and what her needs were and most of the delay was either vision related tasks, executive functioning (which is TBI from what I understand) and sensory integration. I have also been told she has auditory processing delays. The testing that normally would take about 6-8 hours to complete had to be broken up into 30 minute or 1 hour sessions over the course of a month. She often would fall asleep waiting or the headache would be just too bad to proceed.
I am convinced that the TBI caused the CTE. She didn't have it two years ago. I think its possible that her symptoms are a combination of both. I realize it can take kids up to two years to fully recover from a TBI but I think the amount of symptoms that she has on a daily basis to me says that something else is going on. She has also been in cognitive behavioral therapy since June and the therapist agrees with me that they need to keep looking for other answers.
Any help or insight regarding head trauma and Chiari would be very helpful! Thanks!