Hey Yall!
I have been dealing with chiari for about three years now and I had surgery in December of 2015, 3 months after I was diagnosed. About a week and a half ago my symptoms hit me harder than they ever had ( after surgery, anyways). I lost feeling my legs from the knee down and I was tremoring uncontrollably. The back of head was tingling as well. But something new happened…
This time, for the first time, my breathing was severely impacted. My chest was hurting so bad, I had never felt that kind of chest pain. I have tachycardia but that is totally different then what I was going through. I was at the ER and they did absolutely nothing. I had an EKG done the next day and it was abnormal but the cardiologist said it was nothing to worry about. So my question to you all is, has anything like this ever happened to you? Have you had severe trouble breathing.
It has been 9 days since I was in the hospital and my breathing is still out of wack and my chest hurts. If anyone has ever had this happen, please respond.
The only medical reason I brought this to a chiari support page is due to the fact that your brain stem control your breathing, heart rate, BP, Ect . Could it be impacted?
-Ashlyn
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Chiari can trigger Scoliosis. Depending on which way the spine curves can affect your breathing if you in fact have it. Mine is considered levoconvex scoliosis, which means the spine tilts left. At 46 it is quite sitely and I try and mask it in public. (possibly I still haven’t accepted all that’s physically wrong with me yet)
An Xray should be able to detect that. Also, if you go to the doctor’s, tell them that you are experiencing breathing problems and that you would like to get checked for scoliosis. Chiari can cause this as well as spinal degeneration and a whole host of other things.
Be proactive in asking questions! Get a notebook and jot things down when you think of them or when symptoms occur, journal. With Chiari, my thoughts are very disorganized. I just read of success story of a nurse on the internet who had decompression and then went back to work. She was in her 30’s. There are different degrees of Chiari. I was skeptical when I read the story because I can barely keep up with my family, let alone go to work and be cognitive and alert, painfree enough to do a job like nursing. Was the story true…? Who knows. Maybe if I was diagnosed earlier in life I could have a career and live normal too. My family/friends will often ask me if I am okay or what’s wrong. They say I have a zoned out look on my face that looks deeply concentrated and that my face looks long and tired. So, I’ve learned to mask this too. I even had a clerk at a store look at my face and start laughing recently. Was she laughing at my long, empty looking face? Don’t know. Did I think so, yes. There was no one else around.
So, what is my point? Age can possibly work in your favor so take advantage of it if you can and are young! Also, there are no stupid questions when it comes to the care of your body.
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