Perm; Tracking Variables

The spinal MRI was done on a Sunday morning.  For future reference, asking a 9 year old boy to sit still for 2.5 hours first thing in the morning is a really, really bad idea.  In our defense, we were told they were scheduling 90 minutes of magnet time and could probably do it more quickly since they were doing the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar series back-to-back.  And like a total novice, I figured MRI time was expensive enough that I actually believed the scheduling receptionist.  Ha.  Future MRIs will all be done as the last appointment of the day after as active a day as he can tolerate.  It wasn’t that he was in any way rambunctious, it was just that the tiniest of movements create blurry MRI images, requiring that segment to be repeated.  It’s been 3 months and Christopher is still adamant he won’t ever do a full spine MRI again.  We did, however, discover that there are no syrinx in his spine at this time, although there's roughly 50% odds Chiari patients will develop syringomelia in their lifetime.

The eye appointment was, from my perspective, far worse, though.  His eyes had to be fully dilated so that the ophthalmologist could see as far back along the optic nerve as possible.  She didn’t find any evidence of present or past damage, although she qualified it by saying she can only see so far, and it’s possible for damage to be present posterior to what she can observe.  She felt that the visual disturbances were migraine auras, and felt confident he’d be prescribed a migraine preventative when he saw the headache specialist—but couldn’t herself as she treats eyes, not heads.  Christopher didn’t like the eye exam, but the nightmare started when he walked into bright light and had to ride home.  At one point, he asked me why he was seeing rainbows on his hands.  By the time we got home, the headache was debilitating and he spent the rest of the day curled up on the couch in the dark.  I came very close to taking him to the ER that night, as he had a couple pretty scary moments, but chose instead to see if he could sleep it off.

Come morning, he wasn’t any better and his ears were hurting badly, so off we went to the pediatrician.  She diagnosed him with an ear infection and prescribed antibiotics, but again, couldn’t do anything for the headache.