Chiari is such a painful thing to have to deal with.  I have not yet been decompressed, and the pain is non stop.  It has gotten to thew point where I have to take a pain pill in order to go to sleep and even then I have so much pain in my neck that I have to lay a certain way or I cannot sleep. Well during the night last night I had somehow rolled over onto my back and my head must have slipped off my pillow.. it was about 3 am that I woke up in excruciating pain, my neck was bent way to the left and the pain was so intense I couldn't move.. It brought tears to my eyes but after about 45 minutes of slowly working myself to the edge of the bed I was able to stand while holding my head tightly in a normal position. 2 ice packs later I was able to lay back down and get back to sleep. Not a good night... I hope the doctor will be able to do my surgery soon and I can get some relief from all this pain..
Chiari malformation is such a horrible thing to have to deal with for anyone, the symptoms  can be ongoing, or come and go according to the pressure position and which nerves are affected. Symptoms can lessen and it is possible to reverse some of them with decompression surgery if it is caught before permanent damage occurs. The problem though is that so many find out too late about this condition and nerve damage has already progressed too far to reverse.

 That is why it needs to be caught early on in life.  If doctors actually saw chiari for what it actually is instead of as "just a little thing" then more people would get treatment sooner and not have to go through this pain all the time , they live their lives not knowing why they are hurting.

I include myself in that because I am 53 years old and have just found out for the first time that I have chiari malformation.  I have had countless MRI's to figure out why I have all these symptoms that I have, no doctor ever told me until now.

 WHY DID IT TAKE SO LONG TO FIND OUT????

Because these doctors have been taught to ignore chiari unless it becomes symptomatic.  The problem is that they are so used to "ignoring" this condition, that when it is a threat to human life they never think of chiari as the cause.

This needs to stop, people are suffering, people are dying, all because the doctors don't know any better??

Educate yourself, educate your doctor, don't expect him to look out for your best interests, you have to look out for your own..  Your doctor is running almost 24/7 on a schedule that involves seeing thousands of people, most of the time he has no spare time to do research for you personally, you have to do it yourself and for your loved ones..

Be in the know!!!  Do your research!!  Look at your MRI's yourself.. you can pick up a copy at the same place where you got your MRI's done, give them a call... look for yourself.. see if you have a chiari malformation in your head...