My Chiari Experience

Well I grew up not really knowing there was anything wrong with me. How do you define something wrong if you have never known any different?
As a child I didnt get many headaches but if I did they would last days at a time.
One constant symptom I will always remember having (but had no idea it wasnt normal) was, that when straining with a bowel movement, an intense pain would start at the bottom of my head, just above the back of my neck and then radiate up through the top of my head for a short period in time, approx 10 seconds of shear agony. I would have to hang onto the top of my head with my hands just pressing down on it. This is a common symptom of Chiari, I was to find out much later only through speaking to others with Chiari malformation.
I would also notice when I got older how exertion ie. a game of netball, would end with me feeling disorientated, breathless, dizzy and afraid of passing out. I put this down to maybe being unfit though most of my friends were'nt any fitter than I, and they merely had red faces, thirst and perspiration.
So I was starting to realise I had vague symptoms of something. But what?
I ended up going down the track of being diagnosed with anxiety and stress and tension, I guess because my symptoms were vague and no-one really took me seriously or looked into my complaints. I really felt like a burden to my doctors who would repeatedly tell me i had nothing wrong and that I magnified things.
When I got to my 40's (with my anxiety diagnoses firmly embedded and believed by me ) if I went for a 30 minute walk I would feel light headed and woozy. The toilet straining thing still happened (I had mentioned my concern of this to a doctor who told me there was absolutely nothing to worry about), my vision every now and then would change for a period in time of a day or 2 then back to normal again, and I had constant pain and feeling of pressure across my shoulders and up the back of my head, along with a little numbness starting to happen mostly in my arms and hands. My handwriting deteriorated also. Of course all of the above was diagnosed as stress especially after one doctor sent me along to a neurologist who on physical examination of me walking in a straight line and touching my nose with the tip of my finger with my eyes closed, said there was no problem.
I was noticing I was deteriorating in subtle little ways ( but they now had age to blame as well ), I was getting very forgetful (menopause?), my memory was bad, the headaches were more frequent, I was tripping over things - I felt strange. One day I went to the bank and while standing in line, all of a sudden I couldnt see, there was a bright "nothing" in my vision. I couldnt read signs or focus on faces. I got really scared and nauseas and a horrible headache came on. Sound like a migraine? Yes well thats what was diagnosed when I got to the hospital. However, after a week the headache was still there so I went to my GP. (general practitioner). He sent me for a CT scan with which the results came back as a possible Chiari 1 malformation. When my GP told me what that was I went into all kinds of emotions and panic - my brain was falling down out of the back of my head!!!! The GP said there was no urgency, I had had this since birth, dont worry. ( it wasnt his head, right?) Of course I worried. I KNEW my symptoms were getting worse, I KNEW there was deteriorations in strange little ways that werent acknowledged. I know my body - I had been living in it for 48 yrs by this stage.
I was sent off for an MRI which confirmed Chiari 1 malformation with a herniation of 8mm and then along came my referral to a neurosurgen.