MRI

[musicalm]

Three Months ago I started having severe migraines for which I ended up in the ER for on multiple occasions. I’ve since had to diagnose them as a mixture of basilar, barometric and tension migraines. They did a CT scan in the ER to try and figure out what was going on and found nothing because it came back normal. They did an MRI which came back ‘normal’. My primary doctor has taken me off all medication except for Effexor and Topamax.
Three months later I got a hold of my MRI results and discovered that it wasn't entirely true what they said about my MRI being, "Normal" Although I'm not very good at understanding neurological science speak so I decided that my doctors are no longer qualified to tell me the truth and have put my faith in second opinions. So I will type up my entire MRI here:

Brain MRI w/o and w Contrast, Head MRA WO Contrast 11/24/2010 4:01 PM

IMPRESSION:
1. Normal MRI of the brain and essentially normal MRA of the head.

INDICATION: HA

Technique: Routine 1.5 T MRI of the brain without and with 16 mL of Magnevist, and routine noncontrast MRA of the head.

FINDINGS:
MRI brain: Brain signal, morphology, diffusion and enhancement are normal. The cerebellar tonsils extend to the foramen magnum, with small caliber is cisterna magna, though not meeting strict criteria for Chiari malformation. Ventricles and sulci are normal. No intracranial mass or abnormal fluid collection. Visualized skull base and calvarium are unremarkable.
MRA head: Intracranial arterial flow related signal intensity and morphology are normal, with no focal stenosis, major vessel cutoff, aneurysm or malformation. The anterior and left posterior communicating arteries are clearly visualized. A hypoplastic right posterior indicating artery is likely also present. The left A1-A2 junction is fenestrated.

Does this mean that I’m likely to have a stroke or an aneurism? Am I likely to develop all the criteria for a Chiari Malformation in the future? What else could this mean?

[Dr_Nassim]

The first doctor was ok, the second is not a specialist, the third which is the radiologist is speaking about something undefined unless he cannot clearly knows how does look a Chiari malformation.... he has not the right to terrorize patients with big and unclear for him pathologies.
I also should tell you that I don’t have the right to be judge in your case unless you tell us how do you look after the treatment... Nobody is covering truth, you are just overstressed and stress can cause all these symptoms, look up so for the cause of your stress please.

[Dr_Nassim]

I am sorry I dont know how to deal with a patient who accept to continue being on inefficient treatment even on a tripple dose, drug companies should know about you as you are taking this dosage and this is amazing. I am sorry you are undertreated finally because misdiagnosed, and I should look to your whole file and not in a formum conversation style. try to upload your brain MRI. waiting for your reply

[musicalm]

I have gone to my neurologist, three months later, to talk to him about my results and he openly admitted that there was an underdeveloped artery on my right side, that was never mentioned in the past, and avoided my question completely about the fenestrated artery junction on my left. He gave me a careless attitude and told me that it was just "coincidence" that the fenestrated artery just so happened to be on the same side as my head ache.

I used to take care of my headaches through exercise and eating healthy. But now every time I try to exercise my head just throbs and my vision goes red so I've had to slow down on that to just taking evening walks, and that's only when I'm not actually experiencing a migraine. When I am I can't walk straight due to moderate to severe vertigo so I'm usually stuck in bed. And your right all the headaches can be cause by stress. I've had to become a headache Expert so to speak because at this point I have experienced every kind of headache that a person can probably experience. My Basilar type headaches are caused by my menstrual cycle, so therefore the stress of hormones. Barometric are caused by changes in barometric pressure, so yes, I agree that does tend to stress out my brain considering I end up in bed wanting to rip my hair out when ever a storm comes. And the Tension headaches are simply caused by just every day stress, which I try to minimize by changes in lifestyle stress ors and exercise. And occasionally I do get diagnosed with Status Migrainous which simply means that I have a stubborn migraine that doesn't seem to want to go away. My record longest migraine ever was 5 weeks. I was hospitalized. While in the hospital they tried a morphine drip and various other drugs on me to try and get rid of the headache. Nothing worked and that's when the doctor took me off of everything except for effexor and topamax. I got a 12 hour break from this migraine at one point and they considered it broken, but it was just before my next period.
Currently I'm taking 150mg of Effexor and 300mg of Topamax per day. So please, mock my suffering some more.