Suzanne Calling

The vertigo has been a constant companion since January 1st, a full month of riding the merry go round and wondering when the hell it would stop.  Last Monday, thanks to some self-caused stress (oversleeping), it ramped up to the degree that I usually experience right before the carousel operator kicks the switch into overdrive, and sends me staggering to the bathroom amid the 45 (or 78) rpm my world is making. My MRI results were insignificant, which basically means that there has not been enough progression in the Chiari to cause this.  I went through the 10 day course of faux steroids, took hydrocodone for the headaches as directed by my neurologist (a treatment course we normally do, but she'd asked me to try a run of Imitrex for any and all headaches-but there's a really bad interaction with sumitripan and this not-a-steroid), and nothing was stopping it. A week of phone tag ensued, and as is typical, the neurologist looks at the headaches first, vertigo second. ...

Last year, when I got the new (and arrogant) neurologist, she sent me out of the office with prescriptions for three 'just in case' medications. The fact that vertigo had returned after ten years of playing nice was enough for her to think that it would not lay dormant anymore. For the most part, I feel like I carry a little Vera bag in my purse that takes up space and sounds like maracas. I had a couple of major vertigo episodes that were enough to convince me that hey, maybe that little bag of medication isn't such a bad idea. Let's just say that when you triage yourself to the doctor, she sends you to 4 specialists because she doesn't want to agree, and two of those doctors come back with the EXACT same diagnosis you'd triaged, you don't really put a lot of faith in their abilities. In the past few months, I've had a fair bit of low level 'spinny' spells that weren't fully ramped up and started taking the meclizine I was prescribed. ...

So, this vertigo thing. It sucks that it appears to be back in my life, but I'm starting to learn something more each time. For instance, I woke many times last night, mainly because my head was pounding. I still haven't learned that sleep no longer rids me of headaches, so I kept going back to sleep. (Yes, I know. Stupid.) When I finally got up at 5:30, I took some Aleve and it did nothing. Normally, I leave for work by 6:15, but I just didn't feel right leaving my chair. I then realized where the headache was and the other things I was experiencing. So now, I have the sinus headache, the allergy headache, the migraine, the generic, the Chiari, AND can now identify the vertigo headache. Twenty minutes later, I was 'spinny'. I took stronger medication and went back to sleep. Thankfully, it didn't devolve into a full objective vertigo episode, but now I can identify a specific zone of my head that hurts that is unique from the other headaches. ...

Among all the quirky health issues that I have in my life, one is Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo , which was diagnosed in early 2002. Back then, when it first hit me, it was scary to wake up at 3 in the morning. I needed to use the bathroom, and was feeling like I was going to vomit. I was having this sensation that my head was a lead weight, all the while feeling like I was on a merry go round that was spinning at triple speed. How I made it into the bathroom without major injury (gouged my index finger really bad that morning) I'll never know. While I somehow got there upright, I ended up on the floor-and stayed there. I can't remember whether I actually did vomit, but I held onto the toilet for dear life for a while, then crawled back to bed on the other side of the room. I just realized, and I don't know why, but Ed and I seem to swap which side of the bed is ours and he always seems to take the side closer to the toilet. Weird. Somehow, later that morning...