Brain Fog 2

Disability Meniere's

I went to see my Otolaryngologist (an Ear, Nose & Throat doctor or ENT) yesterday. I had an emergency work-in appointment for the afternoon. The Wife drove herself to her cardio rehabilitation appointment in the morning, the second time she has driven herself since she had open-heart surgery in July. I’ve been driving her three times a week to that appointment over the months since, and the strain of being there for her over the course of those months has finally taken a toll on me.

Last Wednesday I started experiencing rotational vertigo. It persisted through the day, no matter how hard I tried to tamp it down. I finally gave up and took Xanax to quell it, but then I started feeling nauseous and so had to add a Phenergan to the mix to keep myself from hugging the commode for a few hours while the room continued to spin. Needless to say, I slept the sleep of the dead for about twelve hours.

When I woke up the next morning I could tell that my hearing had altered. I couldn’t say how, but I knew it was different. I was having a hard time focusing too. Muddy thoughts, muddy feelings, muddy existence. I struggled through the day, not feeling myself at all. The Wife got clearance from her heart surgeon so that she could drive herself to her appointment on Friday, just in case; and indeed I was hardly capable of driving on Friday when I woke up. I did manage to get to McDonald’s and back for breakfast, but the habit of ordering coffee with my morning cheeseless McMuffin that I had developed over the course of the few months I had spent chauffeuring the Wife to her rehab appointments finally bit back, and the caffeine from the coffee started up another round of vertigo that lasted into Saturday.

Brain fog on Saturday. Brain fog on Sunday. Barely able to discern what it was I was thinking at any given moment. On the upside, my re-emerged symptoms gave me time to play World of Warcraft for the first time in over a month; but on the downside none of the many other things that I had been putting off for months seemed possible. I was finally able to do some technical work late Sunday night, but that just exposed me to one of my known allergic reactions (dust) which then triggered symptoms again.

At my Monday ENT appointment the audiologist determined that I had lost another 10% of hearing from my left ear. Had it been the right ear, I would have let them give me an intratympanic injection of steroids to try to preserve the hearing. My right ear is my only remaining connection to the normal hearing world. The left ear losing another 10% puts it just under half as effective as a normal ear. Not enough to worry about, from my perspective. I went home with a prescription for oral steroids, which I don’t intend to take.

There is a new weather front rolling into Austin as I type this. I can feel my thoughts slowly draining away as the pressure changes and my tinnitus worsens. It’s time to leash the dog and go for a walk before the storm hits. Maybe I’ll watch a familiar movie or play some more Warcraft tonight. It will be something to look forward to at least. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of writing or thinking for me in the near future.

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