Between 2012 and 2014, Tracy Jakich Davis’ 14-year-old son, Jaden, developed a host of mysterious symptoms that more than a half dozen doctors near Phoenix, Arizona could not piece together to form a diagnosis: a rash that looked like ringworm all over his head; swelling and pain in the knees that kept him from playing basketball; pain in the fingers so strong he couldn’t grip a golf club; a suppressed immune system that caused him to pick up viruses every four to six weeks; and, finally, severe migraines with blurred vision.
When Jaden was finally diagnosed with acquired Chiari, or a brain herniation caused by a spinal fluid leak, in November 2014, doctors rushed him into brain surgery. However, that only made things worse, according to his mother, and they were back in the hospital on multiple occasions for intolerable pain that ultimately spread to his teeth. At the emergency room in unbearable agony, an attending physician sent him to have his two front teeth pulled, Davis said. Yet that didn’t work to alleviate his pain, either.
