I couldn't stand it any longer & I picked up my MRI report today. I don't understand all of this. Can anyone help me?
The cerebellar tonsils extend well below the plane of the foramen magnum, down to the level of the posterior C1 arch with minimal CSF space at the level of the foramen magnum.
I hate to be this guy, and thank you Twitch for posting a visual help :) , but just to clarify for Becki... That left arrow is pointing at the C1/C2 area which is also referred to as the atlas(C1) and the axis(C2). These two vertebrae are very unique because they are where the skull meets the spine. I think most adults with Chiari have some kind of problem with at least one of those vertebrae because of the weight of the skull taking it's toll on Anways, here's a lady showing the c1/c2
So Basically what I'm gettin to is that the Foramen Magnum is your skull hole, right below that is the C1,C2,etc. What they are saying is that the tonsils are coming out of your foramen magnum and decend further down into the canal... and they shouldn't be doing that. All your brain should be in your skull and those darn tonsils are blocking fluid from getting in and out of your skull properly :) I hope this makes sense because my brain no work so good right now and thinking words is hard atm. <3love
Becki,
If you think of your condition as a cork in the top of a bottle of wine it might help. Imagine the cork positioned just above the top of the bottle and centered, in the normal person (one without cm), but your cork (ours:) is further down than it should be. Instead of wine flowing nicely around the cork, it can’t flow well because the cork is stopping it partially to completely in really severe cases. So not only does the increased intercranial pressure create symptoms because the flow of CSF (wine) is restricted and builds pressure around your brain, but the reduced flow to the spinal chord causes symptoms as well since the spine likes to be constantly bathed in fresh cerebrospinal spinal fluid. Also, as if this wasn’t enough, the actual physical contact of your brain touching your spinal chord (brain stem) causes a lot of the symptoms as well.
The real bummer of this disease is that it’s the brain. Whenever any organ is unhealthy it creates symptoms associated with that organ. Since its the brain that’s being effected here, the symptoms are crazy all over because the brain and brain stem control your entire body.
Hope this helps some and hey, when is it not a good time for an alcohol analogy.