Just worried as to what MRI results mean

Hello @bradleycolleen44 . it is my understanding that the venous anomaly is an arrangement of veins within your brain. They are congenital and do not cause any harm. Looks like you are okay per the impression, but perhaps a discussion with your doctor might make you feel more at ease.

Thank you so much for responding it does ease my mind a little but still want to find out what can be done with this condition. I have a follow up next Friday with my PCP!

Hello @bradleycolleen44, welcome to Mayo Clinic Connect. It's understandable to be concerned about MRI results. I recall feeling the same way when I had a brain MRI while trying to diagnose symptoms. Uncertainty is challenging, and patience in waiting for a follow up can be a test in and of itself.

Connect is made up of patients and care givers who share personal experiences, we are not doctors. I agree with @frances007 that a discussion with your doctor will help you feel more at ease plus give you accurate answers and a plan forward. Next Friday can't come soon enough for you, I bet!

Do you care to share how long you've been having gait changes, dizziness with position change, and headaches? Can you identify any triggers?

I also have mild degenerative disk disease in my upper and lumbar spine with mild spurring and FaceTing. Waiting on an appointment to see a neurologist

I also have severe hypothyroidism that is under active and have been back on my medication for three weeks. I had a level of 126

I also have white clear fluid that comes out of my nose and it looks like cerebral fluid. Would the MRI have showed this fluid leakage?

@bradleycolleen44 I think many of us, myself included, have clear fluid and runny noses due to allergies at times. Take a deep breath. I know you have concerns about your MRI results and that is understandable when you are handed a report stating something and you don't understand if this is something to be concerned about, and it is so easy to jump to a conclusion. I'm sure your doctor can explain and put you at ease.

Many people do have vascular anomalies in their brains, and the veins are low blood pressure. There are also anomalies where a higher pressure artery connects directly with the low pressure veins without dispersing blood into smaller capillaries between those in one of every 700 people. I have one of those called an AVM which is a clump of vessels in the brain. That may at some point be a weak spot, but I have no symptoms, and it was an incidental finding. If that was causing symptoms like a seizure or headache, my doctor would have been all over it, but he told me not to worry about it. I do know that keeping my blood pressure in a healthy range is in my best interest. It's best not to try to go and fix something in the brain that would also cause some damage to other areas in trying to do that and could result in a permanent disability. Only a specialist can determine that risk of leaving it alone vs treating it with a procedure. That being said, there are some treatments for AVMs that can hit just that spot. I don't think about this most of the time, but if I had unexplained symptoms, I would contact my doctor about it.

I also had cervical stenosis in my neck and I had all the same symptoms that you report with gait changes, dizziness, headaches and change of symptoms with neck position. All of that can be related to spine problems in the neck that may be compressing the spinal cord. If you have had a whiplash injury in the past, that may be a factor. Another possibility that I also have is thoracic outlet syndrome which can alter the blood supply to the brain and arms with positional changes of the neck and arms. One test for that is to listen to the pulse in the neck, and the patient turns their head. If the pulse is lost, that can indicate TOS as it did in my case. TOS and a spine injury can happen at the same time during a trauma like a whiplash.

I think your next step of seeing a neurologist is the right path. They will test to determine the cause of your symptoms, and you can ask if they think you have TOS or a spine condition or both. Something else that happened to me was vertigo due to muscle spasms that were turning my vertebrae independently without me turning my head. This causes the vertebral artery that runs through the side of the cervical vertebrae to be stretched, and it alters some of the blood supply to the brain causing dizziness. That was bad enough for me on a couple of occasions, that I fell down. Just looking up caused the dizziness and that action would have compressed the vertebral artery a little bit and with it already stretched it was cutting off blood supply. Since then, I had spine surgery that removed the collapsed disc and bone spurs and fused my C5/C6 vertebrae, and this does not happen now.

Your doctors will figure this out, and just know that you are on a course to treatment after they determine the exact cause of your symptoms. Just take this one step at a time. Would you please let us know what your doctors find as the cause of your symptoms so we can support you?

Jennifer

I also have lost little feeling In telling when I have to urinate and bowel movements but I can still feel when I actually do have Them

I haven’t had any accidents though

@bradleycolleen44 That is also a symptom of spinal cord compression (changes in bowel or bladder function). I had compression of my spinal cord because the C5/C6 disc ruptured into the central canal and grew bone spurs there next to it. I was also having muscle spasms at the time that where moving my vertebrae and straightening the curve in my neck, and essentially that would make the spinal canal a bit smaller. It put more pressure on the cord and for awhile, it was intermittent. When my physical therapist realigned everything, by bladder worked better and my walking was normal, but when it shifted, I had difficulty emptying my bladder and I walked with a limp. This may be an early sign of bladder issues with spinal cord compression. It was for me. It can advance to incontinence that can became permanent if the spinal cord is not decompressed with surgery. You will want to mention this to your doctors and ask the neurologist about consulting a spine specialist.