Michelle Farris said she suffered for three years and went through seven doctors before discovering she had a brain condition.

Farris, coordinator of the conference center and adjunct instructor at Northeastern State University’s Muskogee campus, said the condition is called Chiari malformation.

Symptoms include dizziness, muscle weakness, numbness, vision problems, headache, and problems with balance and coordination, says the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. It is caused by a lack of space for the lower and rear part of the brain.

Although this condition affects slightly less that one in 1,000, most of these people don’t show symptoms, according to the University of Southern California Neurological Surgery. That means that in Muskogee County, approximately 70 people have the condition and may not know it.

Farris, 35, underwent surgery to correct the condition.

“It was a very scary feeling to go into the brain surgery,” Farris said. “They opened up my neck and skull. What happens with Chiari is that your cerebellum starts to sag onto your spinal column. And it can block the flow of your spinal fluid up into your brain and that’s when you start having the symptoms.”

To correct the condition, surgeons make more room for the cerebellum, she said.

“They removed part of my skull, and there is an arch above the vertebrae that they removed,” she said.

Farris remembers when she first experienced symptoms.

“In July of 2006, my husband and I had just bought a new home and we started packing to move,” she said. “I noticed that every time I would bend over to pick up a box or pull something out of a box I would get a headache. I went to my primary care physician and he thought I was getting a sinus infection, because I’m pretty prone to those. So he gave me an antibiotic, decongestant, things like that.”

That didn’t work, and a subsequent MRI was declared clear, so Farris was referred to a neurologist in Tulsa. That neurologist diagnosed her with migraine headaches, but none of the medications worked. She was referred to a different neurologist who diagnosed a cerebrospinal leak but the tests came back clear. Farris was referred to a third neurologist at the University of Oklahoma Neurological Clinic, who thought she had another type of headache. A year of medications brought no relief.

“Then I was referred to a fourth neurologist at OU, and he decided that since it had been a little over a year since I had had my MRI, that he wanted to do another one to see if anything had changed,” she said. “So I was told in February when I went back for the results that I had Chiari malformation.”

Farris said she was referred to neurosurgeon Dr. Timothy Mapstone at OU Medical Center, who showed her the malformation in her brain was visible in her MRIs going back to 2006 but had been missed multiple times. Mapstone arranged the surgery.

There was a great deal of emotional stress, Farris said, but she found many sources of support.

“I found an online support group after I was diagnosed,” she said. “These were people who had actually gone through the misdiagnosis, basically the same story. Some had gone through the surgery and not had good outcomes; others had had great outcomes and were returning to a normal life. So I found a lot of inspiration there.”