Vertigo – RAnt(hony)-ings

Worst Rotational Vertigo Experience

I had taken off early from work to go get my children from school. It had been a fairly hectic day and I was frazzled and the traffic was the usual Austin stop and go parking lot all the way across town to pick up my daughter from her school. Then I drove back across town through the same traffic to pick up my son from his day care.

We had all just gotten back in the car. I had strapped my son in the child seat, made sure my daughter was buckled into the passenger seat and gotten in the car myself. Visions of which kind of food we’d get on the way home were being discussed when the world came unstuck and started to spin around my head.

I had nothing to alleviate the rotational vertigo with me in the car. I really had no idea how to treat it other than to hug the toilet and throw up until it passed. I couldn’t do either of those things because we were miles away from home. I didn’t have a cellphone at the time because we couldn’t afford one. The school was closed and the teachers had all gone home.

So we waited. It was summer in Texas so we sat there with the engine running in the car and the air conditioner blowing full blast on my face while I stared fixedly at a screw head in the interior finish of my car. This went on for about two hours.

After that time, with little let up in the vertigo and no convenient police cars to flag down, I got my daughter to play lookout for me. I would creep forward to an intersection and wait for her to tell me it was clear. Luckily there was little traffic on the side roads between where we were and where the house was, so I just went block by block until we got back to the house, where I promptly went to the bathroom and started throwing up.

A friend bought a cellphone for me the next day and demanded I allow her to pay for it. I started carrying meclizine around with me. When that proved to not be enough I got valium and promethazine and had to use them and the cellphone pretty regularly to keep the nausea to a minimum and to call people to get me home. Get my children home. Then I stopped working and things got a lot easier to deal with even if paying for them got quite a bit harder.

I’ll never forget that day, though. How helpless I felt. How dreadfully wrong everything could have gone. It is probably one of those scarring events that keeps me from doing things to this day, and that day was about twenty years ago.

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Easter Vertigo

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!

Treating Meniere’s & Its Symptoms

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.

Booster Vertigo

I have answered several questions over the last few months since the government (outside of Texas) started mandating COVID vaccination and recommending that everyone get a booster shot six months after initial vaccination. Questions from fellow Meniere’s sufferers who are concerned about having a rotational vertigo attack following vaccination. I have a quick answer for all of them. All of you.

What Would Bunk Do?

It is entirely possible that the stress of any vaccination could trigger a vertigo spell. You should be prepared for this if vertigo is a thing that you have ever experienced. Stress can cause vertigo. Be prepared.

Most vaccinations cause mild vertigo for me. I accept this fact and move on. I get the vaccinations anyway, even with the added vertigo and associated other ill-feelings. I do this because the stress of illness also gives me vertigo.

I get vertigo when I go for a long walk and provoke an allergy attack, of course getting sick gives me vertigo. The vertigo I get from a cold or the flu? That vertigo is worse than what the vaccination makes me suffer through. I’d rather not have that so vaccination is a no-brainer for me. Just looking at the big picture.

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Warning Signs of Vertigo?

Doc diagnosed me with cervical vertigo

I had to look up Cervical Vertigo. I didn’t find an article I liked until I went looking on the VeDA website. I like the tone of that article. In all my time of suffering, even with my long history of vehicular accidents, no one even mentioned that neck posture could be a cause of my symptoms.

I was surprised by this finding. More surprised than you might be reading this here. I tend to think I have everything that I read about. The Wife says this makes me a hypochondriac, I think this means that I’m an empathetic person. I’m going to stick with my assessment of the situation.

The questioner went on to ask about warning signs of oncoming vertigo. That is an interesting question, in and of itself. There aren’t always warning signs. Sometimes you turn your head the wrong way to fast. Sometimes you look out the side window of the car and the sympathetic parts of your brain wiring turn that motion into rotational vertigo. Sometimes watching a movie can set it off:

Rotational Vertigo

Sometimes there are warning signs. Visual migraines, or a change in perception of the light around me is one I’ve started noticing lately. A change in tinnitus pitch or intensity almost always signals something more severe is in the wings. I almost always take something when I notice this. Being proactive in treatment is how you avoid a full-blown attack. Historically I would notice a taste in the mouth. A metallic or saccharine flavor. If I noticed that I would also take something, generally something more dramatic than the Guaifenesin that I would take for changes in my tinnitus. Something like Xanax, which I try not to take too often. It is too habit forming to indulge in needlessly.

In the end, paying attention to what your body is telling you is the only way to be on top of your symptoms and preventing the worst of them. I wish all of you luck in your own treatment regimens.

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How Was Your Day?

I woke up early Wednesday. 11:00 am. It was early since I hadn’t been asleep for even five hours yet at that point and it was the third night in a row that my sleep had been shorted. I was tired and I felt it, but that wasn’t all that was wrong.

I just felt wrong somehow. I made breakfast knowing that I would likely go to back to bed soon, and then I went upstairs to do some busywork. There was a dust storm in El Paso, the weather site I visited told me. It was a couple of hundred miles away, but there was definitely dust in the windy air here too. It was wrong, just wrong somehow.

The world kept coming unstuck. I’d think “I’m having vertigo” and then I’d check and the world wouldn’t really be spinning. It would want to spin, but not actually spin. It was a weird feeling.

After several hours of this The Wife came home from doing her busywork with friends and I decided to join her in the bedroom. When I got up from my desk I realized just how dizzy I really was. Walking downstairs was a conscious one step at a time procedure. The steps are never where they first appear when the dizziness gets set to ramp up into vertigo.

When I finally made it to the bedroom a few minutes later the world was actively spinning. “That’s just great.” I was almost relieved to be done waiting for it. I took Xanax and laid down at 5:30 pm, dedicatedly staring at the catbus and waiting for the spell to pass. It didn’t pass and I fell asleep instead. Fitful sleep that lasted for a good long time this time.

I woke up just now at 5:00 am on Thursday, almost twelve hours later. I missed dinner. I missed my WoW raid. I didn’t finish Wednesday chores. How was my day? I didn’t have a day. How was yours? Now it’s time to get the bins to the street before six so that the city will pick them up, and then I see if I can have real day today. Fingers crossed.

The Statler Brothers – Flowers On The Wall 1966

Postscript

It’s afternoon, just got back from a walk. This is now the best day since the 10th of March (the last time I was out walking) It’s the best day since getting the jab (I love that word for being stuck with a needle. Fits perfectly) last Thursday. It will never cease to amaze me just how much of a difference getting out and stretching the legs will do for your attitude.

The Beatles – Good Day Sunshine (Remastered 2009)

March 29

I suffered through vertigo again both Saturday and Sunday this past weekend. I spent all day today just trying to catch up on stuff I missed over the weekend. At least I got the laundry done. This turn to Spring will hopefully see a turn from the depressive trough I’ve been in for months. I’m trying not to see the weekend as a harbinger of anything negative for this year. It’s going to be sunshine and kittens 24/7. It’s just too bad I’m allergic to kittens.

Normal Saline Causing Vertigo?

I learned something new. I love it when that happens. When I was hospitalized for the night after having my angioplasty last year,

Angioplasty

…I started to experience vertigo. I didn’t think too much of it, other than the irritation that I felt while trying to wheedle a Xanax out of the nurse because of the vertigo. The stress of having to argue with the nurse about a medication that the hospital could see on my charts as being a medication I have been prescribed adding to the anxiety of an approaching vertigo spell. Yeah, that was fun.

But still. I couldn’t figure out why I had that sudden bout of vertigo. No warnings, none of the normal patterns (not that surgery is normal) But then I remembered that they had me on an intravenous drip of normal saline for most of the day and the night, about 16 hours of normal saline by the time I started to feel the spinning. For a lot of Menerieans salt=vertigo and saline is definitely salt. I have been on a reduced sodium diet for decades now because reducing salt is also what they recommend for people with hypertension, another chronic illness that I enjoy.

Sixteen hours of saline fluid introduced into my system. Surely that wouldn’t cause vertigo, right? I mean, normal saline is the same sodium levels as blood, right? Why else call it normal saline? It turns out that this is not the case. Normal saline just means the saline solution most frequently used in hospitals, and the salt levels are not the same as the levels in the blood.

Each bag of saline contains the same amount of sodium as 20 snack-sized bags of potato chips.
webmd.com

I haven’t eaten an entire bag of salted potato chips in… well, it has to be at least a decade. I occasionally (once a month or less) get a snack bag of air-fried chips from Schlotzsky’s (another Austin original) along with my regular original sandwich (hold the cheese and add the guacamole, please) and unsweetened iced tea, and that is almost more salt than I need in a day. I know they changed that bag at least twice while I was there, which is a lot more salt than I needed.

The assumed harmlessness of introducing normal saline into the bodies of all of their patients has been a point of worry for many doctors. So much so that there have been trials conducted using other replacement fluids than saline solution,

For more than a year, the emergency room and intensive care units at Vanderbilt rotated the IV fluid used to hydrate patients. On even-numbered months, they used saline, and on odd-numbered months, doctors could choose between either lactated Ringer’s or Plasma-Lyte-A. Both Ringer’s and Plasma-Lyte have less sodium than saline, along with other electrolytes. Most of the patients on balanced fluids in the study got lactated Ringer’s.
webmd.com

When I read the phrase lactated Ringer’s I heard it in one of the voices from the show Emergency! from way back when. That was the show that first got me interested in medicine and emergency care. My mother would probably be horrified to learn that I was indoctrinated into the evidence-based medical system by a TV show that she let me watch as a child.

Facts Verse – Emergency! Behind the Scenes Facts & Secrets – Aug 26, 2020

Lactated Ringer’s or the Plasma-Lyte appears to be the better way to infuse fluids into patients. Not world’s better, but statistically measurable improved results from not relying on normal saline for all the patients admitted into the hospital. If you also need lower saline you might ask for one of those two the next time you find yourself needing surgery. Here’s hoping that time isn’t in the near future.

Essential Oil Isn’t

It’s all the rage these days. You can’t swing a dead cat on the internet without hitting someone trying to sell you essential oil.

Our presenters will explain how to build a daily immune boosting routine, how to manage digestive issues, how to use oils during your pregnancy and so much more! Plus, we’ll have a special guest talking about why we created the Online Oil Oasis. You won’t want to miss a single minute!
DoTerra promotional information

Mother was into essential oils for the last few years of her life. Right up to the point where the cancer she refused to admit she had killed her. Part of her insistence on doing things the natural way was from her early education in Christian Science. At some point during her life she shifted god into nature and was convinced that living naturally, organically, was good for her. She did fine with that belief until she started denying the findings of science.

It is a common delusion. Much more common than Christian Science itself is. Most people think organic and natural signify good things until you point out to them that poisons are natural and organic. They are simply natural or organic poisons. Too much water can kill you, as the most basic example. Organic simply means that whatever the product is, it once was alive. Natural means that it can be found in nature. That’s it. That is all that the words mean.

An essential oil contains the smell of the thing. That’s all they are, the smell conveying particles of whatever is infused into the oil. There is no more and no less to the product being marketed as essential. Marketed as something you need or require, need or require being mistaken for smell (essentia) Essential, not essential. It smells like something, not you need that something.

The real problem I have with essential oils is the exaggeration of their effects. If the only claim that proponents of essential oils made was “this smells good, I think you’ll enjoy it” I wouldn’t be writing this at all. That’s not the case, though. The benefits of essential oils are exaggerated because exaggeration sells. Websites like this one make extraordinary health claims like curing colds, asthma, bronchitis, hypertension, liver congestion, heart palpitations, depression, and boosting your immune system (what does that even mean?).Other websites make fanciful claims like “restore your body’s natural energy balance” – a claim so bad it’s not even wrong.
Skeptoid

Every time I go on a Meniere’s help group or talk to a layperson about my disability, almost without fail, someone will suggest I try some essential oils because they will fix whatever problem I’m complaining about at the time. Never fails. These days I have to actively restrain my own desire to lash out when whoever it is looks down their nose at me and pronounces the phrase essential oil.

I’ve tried essential oils. I still have some DoTerra oils that mom had amongst her possessions when we cleaned out her apartment. Tons of DoTerra branded products from vial purses to empty sample containers to dozens if not hundreds of different types of oils that she had read somewhere did this or that for her.

The Breathe formulation does open the sinuses when rubbed under the nose. Several of the essences in the formulation are known astringents. Astringents cause the skin to tighten, opening passages in the sinuses if you rub the oil under your nose. This is a known effect discovered by science. This isn’t because it is natural or organic, it is the chemical formulation that has this effect, an effect that can be duplicated artificially if needed. It’s simply cheaper to get the essence from the natural source. If it isn’t cheaper there are artificial manufacturers out there supplying the cheaper product. The chemical process will still work exactly the same, and you can save a buck at the same time.

The Digestzen has ginger in it. Ginger has long been used to calm digestion. I prefer chewing a Gin-gins to the grassy flavor of Digestzen, and excessive oil in the stomach is an agitant all in itself. Have a ginger ale. It’s all natural.

I can (and probably eventually will) go through every single oil that people offer to me as something that will fix my vertigo and dizziness. Mom offered me dozens when she was still with us. None of her magic concoctions worked. I wanted her concoctions to work, which is half of the necessary equation. The other half, science, simply wasn’t there to put the treatment over the line to make it effective. If it didn’t work when mom dispensed it, it isn’t going to work when a stranger suggests it. Zip it before I lose my temper and tell you what I really think of your woo.

New Year, New Vertigo

I noticed it as I headed for bed this morning. Turning over in bed caused the world to spin, requiring me to focus in order to calm the spin. It wasn’t bad, but it was persistent.

It was also present when I woke up. As I moved about today, the spinning has gotten more persistent, tending towards nausea. So it is time for the Xanax again. The knee and the back are still painful from my bathtub flight last year, so I’m going to sit here and play World of Warcraft in my pained and vertiginous state. Because I’m going to do something today other than drool on myself. I’m hoping I’m not coming down with whatever sickness the Son brought home from college with him.

Happy New Year?

Stability? What’s That?

I wake like a newborn foal. What is this thing called stability? The world spins when I roll over. I try to drink deep because I am thirsty, but the vessel is dry. Time to try walking.

Babies walk better than I do. Wino walk. There are things I need to do when I wake up. What were they again? Ah, the glowy thing in my hand that is mysteriously called a phone has lists on it.

Meds. Past time to take my meds. I need food for meds. Time to make oatmeal. I went to sleep with meds and vertigo, and I wake up with vertigo, still needing meds. Such is life with Meniere’s disease.

Rotational Vertigo

Brain Fog

Down But Not Out

I’m back! Did you miss me?

On Tuesday I started feeling the effects of an oncoming attack, but I was determined to raid with my group in World of Warcraft as scheduled. We managed to do our average best, although we didn’t clear the entire heroic level of Azshara’s palace the first night. On Wednesday I felt worse. The start of a two-day migraine set in, a knot of pain right in the center of my skull. I did manage to show up and raid again that day, but I wasn’t my best and it showed. Thursday the pain was so bad that I sat in the library with no lights on for the entire day, wishing the pain would go away. Even the monitor for the laptop set to the lowest light setting was bright enough to cause stabbing pain, so I just sat there listening to podcasts wishing I could do something else.

On Friday night the vertigo started. It was pretty mild, compared to vertigo attacks of the past. No projectile vomiting. No lying on the bathroom floor. The room would start spinning, and then I would re-orient myself by staring at a point on the wall for ten minutes or so. When I went to bed the vertigo was so bad and persistent that I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t focus on a point in the dark. So I took a valium and finally fell asleep. On Saturday the vertigo could not be dispelled any longer. No amount of re-orientation would make it stop, and I was beginning to get nauseous. Time for the Xanax, which I stayed on for the entire day and through most of Sunday morning.

I woke up about an hour ago. I feel dizzy now. Dizzy, not vertiginous. The lights are still too bright but they don’t hurt like they did Wednesday. I’ve got to go visit my ENT on Tuesday to get a refill on my Betahistine anyway, so at least I’ll have some symptomatic stuff to talk with her about while I’m there. I’m going to try the vestibular exercises that my physical therapist gave me as soon as I publish this. I tried them on Friday when the vertigo started and they just made things worse. Fingers crossed.

Treating Meniere’s & Its Symptoms