possible upper cervical involvement in daughters migraine

My daughter has been seeing a physical therapist for frequent long term knee pain.  (Turns out she had flat feet.)  Her migraine has been bad for months now.  She told the physical therapist about her migraines and when he found out about a previous neck injury he performed a sitting Sharp-Purser Test.  Her headache pain was relieved by over 50%, it went from a 6 to a 2.

There is a chance that when she injured her neck (C2 sublaxation) she did some damage to the ligaments that hold her C2 vertabrae tight to the C1 vertabrae.  This allows the C2 vertabrae to move and put pressure on her spinal/cord brain stem, it can also interfere with the veins, ect. that travel throught the vertebrae in this cervical area.  The symptoms of this are very similar to basilar migraine.

My daughter originally injured her neck about 6 years ago and problems from this old injury did not noticably manifest themselves until this last year (if that is the cause of her chronic migraine).  Looking back (hindsight with knowledge is 20/20) the occasional vertigo and motion sickness she has been experiencing for years could be attributed to this cervical problem.

We have a very good chiropractor and he didn't catch this so there is no gaurentee that if you are seeing a chiropractor regularly that you may not still have some upper cervical interference that is contributing to your migraine.

I do not believe that this is all that is giving my daughter her migraines, I still believe she is getting a monthly menstaul migraine.  I do believe the chronic daily headache (migraine) she has been experiencing for the last 6-7 months is attributed to this problem.  They have all the symptoms of basilar migraine.  The physical therapist wrote a letter to, and called her primary care doctor.  The therapist told the doctor what he found and was recommending that she be seen by a spinal specialist.

I have not heard from the doctor on this yet as that same night my daughte broke her wrist and the doctor has been busy getting us help with that.  When it rains it pours.

There is also another avenue to follow for possible migraine relief.  Try to find an Atlas/Orthoganal chiropractor in your area,  I think the web site is orthogonality.org or something like that.  I used to work for a chiropractor that specialized in this and while not all migraine sufferers can be helped by this, a large percentage of people that came to us with migraines were helped.  It is worth a try.

I hope this may help someone and give them another avenue to get migraine relief.