Francesco Mauro. Cervicodorsal Syringomyelia

Published by ICSEB at 12 July, 2007

Date of intervention: July 2007

I was born on the 3/10/1973 in Crotone, I´m 33 years old, married and father of a 13 year old girl.
Until 1997 I worked in the field of construction, leading a normal life, from the physical point of view. Unfortunately, in 1997 I started having health problems which manifested themselves with different symptoms. Initially dizziness, strong headaches and spinal pains, which prevented me from working for long periods of time.

That´s why I had various medical examinations, a vestibular examination because of a suspected labirintitis, which resulted in being a form of central dysfunction, but without obtaining a cure to improve my condition. My condition was getting worse, causing me great impediments in my work. At the same time I was using analgesics.

In the last month of that same year I started having disturbances in the right upper extremity, partial paralysis of the arm, which turned blue.

For this reason I had many medical visits and cortisone infiltrations due to a suspected periarthritis. This problem became worse until in August of 1998, when my doctor told me to have a cervical MRI, suspecting a herniated disc. While waiting for the MRI, in the first days of September of that same year, I started having pains and motor difficulties in the lower left extremity. After 15 days I had to lean on something in order to walk. Almost during the same period, the tremors started which intensified until I had to walk with the help of crutches. During this time I had the MRI in the Carlo Besta Hospital of Milan where they diagnosed me with a probable post traumatic syringomyelia as in 1995 I was victim of a car accident (a head-on collision with a bus) in which I suffered a frontal-parietal trauma.
Initially they found cystic cavity only in the C6-C7 cervical tract but later, after a year, it extended from C3-C7 to D1-D2 and D5-D8. Since then, as the symptoms continued to increase, there were many stays in hospitals in Italy and abroad.

In the year 2000, I was visited by Dr. Barth A. Green (neurological department of Jackson Memorial Hospital, Miami, Florida), and in the year 2005 in the Hospital Archet 1 of Nice, France, specialized in neurological diseases. But I didn´t get any positive results, on the contrary, it seems that some of the doctor´s diagnoses were incorrect and others could not give a diagnosis that fit the symptoms. Not only that, some of them thought I was crazy, insinuating that I was complicating things myself. This created many emotional problems for me, thinking myself that I was going crazy. Luckily I was able to get over the crisis and started to accept the idea of living with a progressive and invalidating disease against which I probably would have fought with all my might.

So from 1999 I had to stay seated in a wheelchair because of clonic spasms and spastic tetra pareses in the lower extremities, all of these diagnoses were done at the above mentioned.

I also had pains, more or less strong, that spread through my whole body, besides the acute stages that varied according to the season; I had circulatory problems in all the extremities that caused a thrombosis in the left lower extremity. During those years I had symptoms that were never connected to the disease or not even the cause.

For example, during my stay in the Hospital of Lecco in the department of neurosurgery, while I was sleeping I suffered a terrible pain in the thorax which prevented me from asking for help or moving myself. At last, a nurse realized that I wasn´t well and a doctor was called, who without even looking at me, gave me tranquilizing drops, saying that I was agitated. I continued feeling bad all night but, so that wouldn´t consider me a crybaby, I didn´t say anything more, until the next morning, going to the bathroom, I couldn´t do it.

I was tired and very anxious. A doctor asked for an ECG that resulted in a parietal heart attack in an indefinite time. Today I don´t have cardio problems. A cardiologist advanced the hypothesis of an abnormality caused by the disease.

The same thing happened many times but luckily, without any important consequences, but none of the doctors who saw me was able to understand what it was about. Besides, in the first months of the disease, I had a hemorrhage in the left eye and after a retinal fluorangiografia, the diagnosis was retinol dystrophy.

On top of it all, during the most critical moments when I had to stay in bed due to the increase in pain and the loss of strength, for the strong contractions of the thorax, I had respiratory problems. For the strong pains, Dr. Bauknet, anesthetist and pain therapist of the Hospital San Giovanni di Dio de Crotone, took care of me.

I don´t know how useful it is to refer to this but I want to say that before 1998 I had many accidents at work and car accidents, more or less important, all with traumatism in the head.
I would like to underline that at the age of 14, I fell off a horse onto a rock, hurting the sacrum. Since then I have suffered strong pains and cramps that block me for a few minutes.

It seemed that my disease could not be resolved, until the day in which Dra. Piccirillo, anesthetist of the Hospital San Giovanni di Dio and Dr. Bauknet called to tell me that they had found a website which opened the possibility of an operation which could stop the development of my disease.
With my consent, the right contacts were made. And, at last, the day arrived, precisely the 11/07/ 2007, we met Dr. Royo and after the visit, which seemed to me to make the most sense of all the visits I´d had, the 12/07/2007 arrived the waited moment of the operation. That morning, lying on the operating table, I had such terrible pains that my only worry was that I wouldn´t be able to lie still after the operation, and how I would be able to bear it.

To my surprise, after the operation I didn´t feel anything, at first I thought it was the anesthesia, but in a few hours I realized that those terrible pains that had made my life impossible were now only a bad memory.

Happily, my wife and I immediately noticed that the clonic spasms in the inferior extremities, especially in the right, had diminished, from the first hours I noticed a liberating sensation through the spinal column, as if everything had magically disappeared. So much so that the next morning I tried to stand up and with stupefaction, not only could I do this but I could also walk, though with some difficulty.
Actually I continue to improve so much that I can walk without any aid, with continuing improvements in the clonic spasms of the left inferior extremity.

For everything that has happened since the 12th July until now, I want to thank Dr. Royo and his collaborators for having given me the possibility to savor life as I did at one time. For having given me the possibility to be born again and consider the past as only that, the present much better, and the future to plan my life to benefit those who have suffered with me during all these years, my wife and my daughter.

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