Hello, I am currently 17 years old, and I have been plauged by severe constant nausea for almost 6 years. I was diagnosed with an Arnold Chiari Malformation in March of 2006. I was also diagnosed with a Basilar Invagination, which is when my odontoid process (the bone your head pivots on) was pointed in the wrong direction, compressing my brain stem. I had the decompression surgery and removal of the odontoid process in June of 2006. Ever since then, I have been suffering from constant severe nausea. Some days I won't have any, but other days after anything I eat, I feel like i need to throw up. I have only actually thrown up once or twice. But the feeling of needing to throw up all the time after I eat anything is very annoying. I have tried numerous acid reflux medications, such as Zantac, Prilosec, ect. and none of them seem to really work. I am currently taking Pepcid AC, and that seems to help slightly. My nuerosurgeons are wondering if I possibly have Vagus nerve damage, the vagus nerve controls your digestive tract, and that is what is causing my severe nausea. If anyone knows anything about what could be causing this or has ever experienced this, please let me know. Im dying for answers, I am so sick of being afraid of food and being so worried about getting sick. Thank you.

hello, I hope you are still on this site! I believe we have some common problems here and I am very interested in what your doctor told you about the Vagus nerve!! I too have been severely nauseas since decompression surgery. I rarely throw up but I get so nauseas while eating I can barely eat meals. Please email me! I'm going to separate my email address because it's not letting me send it.
* edited PM member.

Hello, I am still on this site. My doctor told me that my nausea is most likely due to vagus nerve damage, due to its compression from the chiari malformation itself. There is not much you can do to fix it. I am currently taking Zofran, which is actually a medication prescribed for cancer patients for chemo. It seems to work well. My doctor said I will just have to wait for the nerve to heal, if it ever does. Hope we can stay in touch.

Hi I am still on this site. It is actually good to hear I am not the only one that is experiencing this. It is very debilitating feeling this way all the time. I am currently taking Zofran, an antiemetic and nausea medicine usually prescribed for cancer patients while they are undergoing chemotherapy. My doctors have told me I really cannot do much for the vagus nerve damage because the nerve will need to heal on its own, which will take alot of time. For now I am going to stick to taking Zofran and hopefully that will continue to work. Hope we can stay in touch.

Hi,
I had a Chiari decompression in 2004 and did very well until until a couple of years ago at which time I began having headaches. A couple of months ago I had a sudden onset of severe nausea. It was so severe that I couldn't raise
my head off the bed for a couple of hours, however, after that it eased off some. Since that time I have had constant nausea of varying degrees. I have had the usual sonagrams, hidascans, and yesterday I had a colonoscopy and EGD (finding nothing abnormal). The EGD did show some erosive gastritis which could cause the nausea, but also could be caused by the nausea. I think if the gastrits was the cause of the nausea the onset would have been slower. Anyway these chiaris being such strange bedfellows I thought I would look online to see if I could find anyone else with a similar problem and I found you guys. If you don't mind I would like to stay in communication with you to keep up with your treatment and progress of your nausea. So little is actually known long term about these things that we need to help each other if we can. When I first learned about my chiari in the late 1980's, no one even knew what they were and there was no way to obtain any significant info about even in medical libraries. So the education has come a long way in the last few years but it still has a long way to go. If you would like to maintain a connection with me just reply to me and I will send you my e-mail address so we don't lose touch. Dee