superior canal dehiscence

Todd in profile as seen by the CT scan Today I took the day off work for a couple reasons. First, my parents needed someone to take them to the airport at an ungodly hour. I got up at 4:26 AM in order to drop them off at 5:45 AM, so they could catch a plane for Africa.

So I decided that since I was going to be in the vicinity, I might as well schedule my head CT for this morning and just do that on the way back from the airport. So at 7:00 AM I had the head CT, and then at 8:45 AM, I had an appointment with my ear doctor to look over the results.

Long story short: He confirmed that I have superior canal dehiscence on the right side, just as we suspected from the MRI results last week and from my history. I may have it on the left side, too, but the right side is the one that’s bothering me.

This is good - but frightening - news. The good news is that after 13 years, 3 doctors (not counting my primary care physician), a couple of misdiagnoses, and some acupunture that didn’t do squat, I finally have a clear diagnosis with physical proof! Woo hoo! And they can even probably fix this. The scary part is that in order to repair the dehiscence, I’ll have brain surgery. And of course there is no guarantee that it’ll fix the problems, and it may cause other problems. But if you’d lived with this problem for over a decade, I think you would agree it’s worth the risk.

Below is the image that (according to the doctors) is the smoking gun. If you knew what to look for you could see that the top part of the superior canal has dehisced, or opened up, into the brain cavity.