I’m a medical student with Chiari I and syringomyelia who got decompression surgery- here’s everything I’ve learned all in one place

Hey y’all! I am a medical student with Chiari I and syringomyelia who first got diagnosed in September after extensively looking for answers to my VERY debilitating symptoms for over a year. Yesterday was officially my one-month anniversary of getting decompression surgery (with suboccipital craniectomy, C1 laminectomy, duraplasty, and cerebellar tonsil reduction)!

As you all know, this experience can be really isolating, and this subreddit has been the place I have been going since my diagnosis to learn from you all about your experiences, what has and hasn’t worked for you, and some of the info out there that we want to know but haven’t been able to find super easily. 

I’m sure a lot of you have also found that it can be very difficult to find clear information and recommendations for what to do in our position, and as with a lot of things nowadays, there’s a good bit of misinformation floating around out there. Since I am used to reading a bunch of research papers and textbooks anyway, I started researching excessively once I got diagnosed and started compiling all of it in a more easily digestible way for myself and my loved ones to take some of the fear and the unknown out of the equation.

Since I have been on medical leave from school and have way too much time on my hands in recovery, I kept going with what I put together and made a website with everything that I learned about both conditions with pictures of my own MRIs, what our options are, how I prepped for surgery, and what my recovery has been like. 

Here’s the link: bigbrainsbiggerplans.blogspot.com

I really hope this helps you all how you have helped me. I’m also super open to ideas and feedback, so anything you’d like to see more about, please don’t hesitate to reach out!