IDA DE ANGELIS. Cord-Traction Syndrome. Arnold-Chiari I Syndrome. Syringomyelia and Scoliosis idiopathic. Multiple Disc Disease.

Published by ICSEB at 11 February, 2019

Surgery date: 12/5/2011
Filmed: 29/10/2018



Ms. De Angelis is 61 years old and she explains her story.

On 31 December 2010, She was really well and she was going to celebrate New Year’s Eve. “That day I had slight back pain, nothing that let me to presuppose what would happen next”.

At 9 o’clock on the night of 1 January 2011, she thought she had caught a flu so she asked her husband to go to the pharmacy and get Paracetamol, meanwhile, she went to the toilet and slightly coughed: it was then when her life changed completely.

Her husband found her semiconscious on the ground with relaxed sphincters. They took her to Emergencies and, during the hospitalization, she found out that she probably had Arnold-Chiari.

In the following months, when she returned home, this type of crisis recurred; the pain was too intense, too much, and the patient did not hide that she did not bear it and wanted to give up living this way: dizziness, violent vomiting, noises in the ears, horrific pains, sensation of boiling oil on the face, photophobia, difficulty with going to the toilet, inability to concentrate, read, and watch TV. She had up to more than 60 crises a day, spent her days praying to survive the following crisis and wondering how the previous one had passed.

Looking for possible solutions, she found Dr. Royo on the Internet. In Turin, they suggested the craniotomy. She investigated about complications, talked with several medical friends and, finally, she had the opportunity to come to Barcelona.

She arrived here already in a state of deterioration: She couldn’t see because of a deviation of the uvula, she choked, the vomit came out through her nose, and “it really was hell.”

On 12 May 2011 the doctor operated on her. She remembers that at 4 in the afternoon the day of the surgery, she could drink, the next day she could walk, and the third day she returned to Torino.

For a year and a half, and now it has been 4 years since then, she has improved a lot, she says: “I could do things I never thought of doing again, I no longer need the help of others for them”.

The patient hopes that all patients will achieve the goal that represents to the recovery of autonomy to her, and is convinced that she will improve even more.