Easter Vertigo

Meniere's

The migraine crept up on me over the course of yesterday evening. I chalked it up to bad weather. Low cloud cover and high pressure tends to make my eyeballs and sinuses ache and the migraine slowly presented itself out of those minor irritations over the late hours of the evening.

I eventually gave up on my attempts to distract myself with playing World of Warcraft, and went downstairs to fix a late snack. I wasn’t hungry but knew I needed to eat something before taking my drugs and going to bed. I hadn’t eaten anything since about noon.

While my snack was heating up in the nuker I went and took my traditional cocktail of migraine drugs. Two ibuprofen, two acetaminophen, pseudoephedrine, guaifenesin and Claritin. As bad as I felt, I kept the dose down to two ibuprofen instead of four. I have been cautioned about overdosing on ibuprofen several times now, even though I’ve known pain sufferers who took as many as ten at a time. So just two ibuprofen instead of four.

When I went back to the nuker (microwave ovens have always been nukers in this household) to check on my low sodium pot pie, the world violently started to spin to the left. It happened so suddenly that I almost missed catching myself on the countertop.

“No, no, NO” I told the world, but it didn’t listen. I couldn’t track anything visually. I felt around for the stop button on the nuker and then felt my way back into the bedroom to get my Xanax, the only treatment that I’ve found can quell rotational vertigo when it strikes.

The wife was at the hospital still recovering from her latest surgery. I’m without my partner in crime today. There will be no cheating the gods of vertigo this time, and it felt like it was going to be one of my worse experiences with the symptom.

I had to shake several bottles before I felt the weight I was looking for, and then I double checked the label. It took four tries before I could make out the name on it. Alp. Alpro. Alprazolam. That’s the Xanax. So I took one.

I felt around for the controls for the bed and then got in it and tried to make the Catbus plushy that I focus on when the world starts spinning stop dancing back and forth in front of me. It was leering at me, not grinning. It also wouldn’t hold still.

When someone finally came to check on me I begged for a promethazine and then I passed out after taking it. Clothes on, no CPAP, no nothing.

I came to breifly at six am and did my own version of an Easter egg hunt. I was starving. Where was the food I’d left in the nuker? I reheated it, ate it, took the remainder of my normal daily drugs from the night before along with a second Xanax just to make sure, and passed back out again.

Now it is 4:04 again. I barely know who I am or what I will be capable of today. I won’t be driving to the hospital to pick up the Wife. It’s Easter. She can’t get her required pain pills after surgery because the pharmacies are closed. Aside from which, I doubt I could get there without crashing the car several times.

Happy Easter everyone!

Postscript

The Cedar Fever woes have continued onto the verge of May. I still feel like every breath is accompanied with a tickling sensation, pretty much every day. I can ignore it until that one breath where I feel like I have to struggle just to get air in my lungs. Twice I’ve had to give up trying to sleep until some extra medication kicked in because I was just too congested to sleep, both in the lungs and in the sinuses. It’s a wonder that I’ve only had one major vertigo attack this season.

My friend Xanax has saved me from a few minor ones as well as making the major one less hellish. I’m going to have to get a refill. I hope the doctors don’t give me crap about it.

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