wonderful visit to the ENT

[rgG]

bazookaman wrote:
After suffering from several bouts of heavy duty vertigo from my cholesterol medicine I think id prefer hearing loss. If it came to that.

I have had a couple of bouts with BPPV, and my mother has suffered from it pretty severely for most of her life, and I hear you about the vertigo. It is absolutely an awful feeling and really debilitating.

[Diana]

I would second the hearing loss over the vertigo.

I got hit with what was believed to be BPPV on 2 January. I went to the doc-in-the-box, was diagnosed with a sinus infection and given drugs as well as a z-pack, and I then went to my regular doctor a few days later after the holidays. Fortunately, I was out of work only a few days. She yelled at me (literally!) and then referred me to an "ear" doctor, as in the doctor's specialty is the function of the ear, as well as migraines, and I was diagnosed to have BPPV.

As with anything, there is a good and a bad, so read on for the rest of the story. You can skip all this and go to the last paragraph if you wish.

In April I was hit with what appeared to be BPPV again, but this one was much worse than I had ever experienced. I was out, and I mean really out, for about 4 days, with aversion to light and sound as well. I could not stand or walk, nor have strung two thoughts together. After going to the "ear" doctor, she referred me to a neurologist. He did an MRI of the base of the head, and then promptly scheduled an MRI of the whole head and arteries in the neck, as he didn't like what he had seen with the first one. The second MRI confirmed that I had a small stroke sometime recently in the past, confined to the base of the head, and another small one was shown to have occurred in the front. When this happened no-one knows. A echo cardiogram followed by an transesophageal echo cardiogram has shown that I have apparently a hole between the two sides of the heart, and the edges of the hole have some thing "fluttery" about it and is "messed up". This is thought to be the source of the strokes. As of now, the second episode is now thought to have possibly been a stroke. I just found out about the hole yesterday; it's something I have had my entire life and never knew.

I have since discovered that stroke symptoms can vary drastically from what most think of; vertigo and nausea are included in the list. And women's symptoms can vary a lot from men's. If I had thought that the second episode may have been a stroke, I would have called 9-1-1 myself and not waited.

I am currently on a blood thinner, a cholesterol medication, a blood pressure medication, another drug for the migraine headaches, a multivitamin and a B-12, as well as the allergy drug and the nasal spray. I'm still walking and talking. As the Monty Python skit goes, "I'm not dead yet!"

The upshot is this: take care of yourself. Go to your physician, as it may not be what you or anyone else thought.

Diana