Suzanne Calling

If you don't have it, get it! There are four others like this, all within the past half hour.  Nope, you're not getting into my gmail.

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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. ...

Yeah, so last post talked about being prescribed a steroid to hopefully fix this off-kilter feeling I've had since New Year's day.  Well, it seems that my severe allergy to Cortisone  means I cannot take any steroids.  Something I did not know, because in nearly 9 years, no other doctor has prescribed steroids.  Probably because they knew this, but I don't know. So, the pharmacy tried to call my OLD phone number to tell me this, I wait in line for a half hour to pick up said prescription and then find this out.  Not happy about that, I call the doctor's office Friday morning to inform them.  They call in a synthetic steroid and I get a text to pick up my prescription last night-except it is the WRONG prescription (it's for the Meclizine I told them I didn't need yet.) I'm still off kilter and no closer to seeing if adding medication to the mix gets rid of the merry go round I've been on.

Well, all of it is pretty crappy, if you ask me, but right now, the most sucky thing? When the neurologist admits that she can't tell whether the vertigo is causing the ubiquitous headaches, or whether the headaches triggered this current vertigo episode.  I can honestly say it is not a lack of knowledge on that front, it is a labyrinth of issues that are so interconnected that even the most seasoned neurologist can't definitively answer this one. Thing is, the headaches are nearly always a part of my days, that I never stop to consider that they're causing other problems.  The only thing I have notices is that the constant neck and shoulder pain (that hovers at a 5 or 6 on that Likert scale) have been strangely absent since this whole episode started. I think the biggest surprise is that this doctor, who I am not really fond of, was actually rather decent and displayed a modicum of compassion-which she has not shown one shred of in the past.  She even offered up a ...

I do not deny that when the new iPhones came out, I had a serious case of 'I WANT!', but the practical side of me knew I couldn't spend that money any time soon.  There's a trip this year that required some deposits (yes, we are boarding a chartered cruise again) and well, I'd rather pay those than have the newest phone. My current phone, the iPhone 4s, was acquired the day those came out just over three years ago.  So, I've been well out of contract on our cellular service, but like I said, the priorities for the fun money this year had a phone lower on the list. When the new phones were announced, I looked at AT&T's website and saw they had two options, the plan we've always had with them, where you pay a subsidized amount for the phone, and the new Next plan, where you pay a monthly fee.  Unfortunately, the site doesn't really spell things out for you, so I assumed that the $25 a month for a 16gig 6 was over and above what we pay each mon...

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. ...