Megan Fisher is a beautiful and happy 7 year old little girl. One day Megan came home from school and complained that her legs really hurt and she had pain shooting through them. Megan had done sport at school after a long holiday so I naturally thought she was a little stiff from this. The pain continued through the week and I knew I needed to get her checked out.
Megan was eventually booked into hospital and she had every blood test known to man taken and an MRI had been booked. Once we got the results back from the Neurologist and she had explained that Megan had Syringomellia, So Megan has a #Syrinx in her spine from C6 level extending superiorly to C3 level with a mass cord demonstrating T2 #hyperintensity. This extends #inferiorly more prominent from T2 to T6 level, demonstrating a maximum width of 4.7mm at T7 level. Inferior to T7 level the latter converges but has inferior extent all the way down to the level of the conus, ending just short of the #conus. The cord ends at L1 level.
We were referred to a neurosurgeon in Durban who was said to be the best, he felt like this was out of his league and referred us to some more surgeons around South Africa. We were scheduled to go to Bloemfontein on the Monday morning for Megan to have surgery. She was going to have the syrinx drained and shunt put in her spine. On Sunday evening my brother who lives overseas had managed to get a well known surgeon to have a look at all Megan’s results and he urged us not to go ahead with the surgery as we needed to find out the cause for the syrinx in Megan’s spine and he felt that we were making a huge mistake. We cancelled the surgery and decided to try and get some more opinions. We were in contact with the best surgeons in Cape Town who referred us to a Dr Kiratu at Ethekweni hospital.
With his care and guidance we found a new neurologist as well who changed Megan’s medication. Her 6 month follow-up MRI was to happen in January 2018 to look for any tumor and see if the syrinx had grown.Megan has had her 6 month follow up MRI – there are no tumors and the syrinx remains the same size. With medication and care Megan is able to continue living a normal life, although she is not allowed to do contact sport, however swimming is very good for her. We continue to live with the syrinx and we will continue to have 6 month follow up’s to see what the syrix is doing. It is believed that Megan was born with this rare disease.
I have spoken about Megan’s journey in a blog – www.mymindfulblogging.com and it has been read by many far and wide.