Neurologic conditions can be very difficult to diagnose--just ask Rosanne Cash. The Grammy award-winning singer/songwriter and daughter of legendary country singer Johnny Cash lived with painful and often debilitating headaches for most of her adult life. It wasn't until more than a decade of searching that Cash finally discovered her symptoms were caused by a Chiari I malformation, in which part of the brain is forced downward into the spinal cavity, and an associated syringomyelia, which is a hole that forms in the spinal cord and can fill with fluid.
[...]
One Long Headache
"I've had headaches for as long as I can remember," says Cash, who lives in New York City and has made a name for herself over the last four decades as a musician and a writer. She has been nominated eleven times for a Grammy and won the 1985 award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Her 2010 memoir,
Composed, was critically acclaimed.
Cash's headaches worsened during her second pregnancy. By 1994, they were so severe that she finally consulted with a neurologist. Still, it wasn't until 2007 that Cash's Chiari I malformation was accurately diagnosed. The first neurologist Cash went to thought the singer was experiencing cluster headaches--an exceedingly painful and relatively rare kind of headache that tends to occur in a cyclical pattern--but the medications she prescribed offered little help.
The second neurologist, a headache specialist, diagnosed Cash with migraines. When the headaches continued and intensified, the diagnosis changed to atypical migraines.
"This went on for a decade," Cash says. "A decade!"
Read the full article.
