Early Detection vs. Surgery - Your Experience?
 

So from what I have read early detection seems to be important, but from many peoples experience, improvements in the initial condition seem to be offset by other problems brought on by such traumatic surgery.

What is the consensus on Early Detection vs. Surgery? I believe that symptoms of Chiari are beginning to manifest themselves in me at the age of 29, so I feel like its kind of the end of the "early" detection period. Should I be happy I'm not collapsing in pain and forgo surgery, or will I be collapsing in pain eventually anyway?

I know this is a complex disease with difficult to understand symptoms but any help from those experienced with this would be appreciated. I am very interested to hear about anyone else who had a slow onset of Chiari and if it eventually progresses to the point of extreme pain and headaches or if it starts to resolve itself over the years.

I personally want to avoid surgery like the plague, to me it seems like a simple enough concept, cut out a piece of the skull and call it a day, but it appears that the associated neck issues make this a nightmare surgery...

I have lived with incessant neck discomfort for nearly my entire life, and it has begun to get worse. Recently I will go weeks at a time feeling as if I have whiplash. Some days I can barely turn my head without stiffness and pain, other days nothing seems to be wrong. On the worst days the pain spreads into my upper back and shoulders... Stretching seems to help but can lead to a hot feeling in my neck. When I stretch I feel lots of cracking in my shoulders and around my upper back but lifting my arms over my head seems to help things a bit temporarily. Perhaps every 2-5 months I get a pounding headache that seems to throb behind my eyeballs. Nothing is different about my day except maybe stress levels, I go to work, I come home, I go places with my GF and drink a couple glasses of wine every now and then, I occasionally swim in the pool... I do drink lots of caffeine. If I don't drink it I feel depressed and lethargic.

Today I woke up and my wrist hurt like it had been broken. I've never felt pain like that in my joints and started wondering if this might be arthritis related. Even now my wrist is pained by anything but the most ordinary movements. Reaching my hand to hit the backspace key is painful, not dreadfully, but in a way I have never felt. I guess it could be repetitive stress, but is there any record regarding joint pain and chiari?

Thank you so much to anyone that can help answer these questions either through personal experience or knowledge. I am heading to the doctor this week and will post back here with answers.

I was diagnosed at 26. I am now 32 years old. I to suffer from headaches and the pounding behind the eyes if I let it go. I've learned that as soon I a feel the pain at the base of my skull I take a motrin 800. or 4 regular ones. this seems to old it at bay. I saw a neurosurgeon when I was first diagnosed and he said the only option was surgery but, when he told me that the chances of it helping the symptoms were low I said forget it. When it starts affecting my balance and such I would maybe recondsider it. Thank God that the syptoms I have are the headaches. the same thing you said about your shoulders cracking when you stretch I get some buring in my shoulders, ringing in the ears. usually the left. What bothers me the most is the head/neck pain.

Well, its been awhile and things have gotten better. I recently went to the doctor and explained my position to him, he noticed that I had sinus problems, so we went on 3 weeks of antibiotics in an attempt to annihilate any infection. This seemed to help greatly with the problems I was having. Right now I am on my last day of antibiotics and have been relatively free of Chiari symptoms. I still have the occasional neck twinge or difficulty concentrating, but for the most part I am doing much better. Most of all, it seems that I have become vastly more personable, something I find strange.

I will come back here and post more thoughts in the coming days. Hopefully my symptoms will stay gone or greatly reduced after the antibiotic course is over.