I Have Meniere's Disease?

I have so much that I have wanted to blog about, but life has so rudely interrupted my attempts. Vertigo has no manners I tell you. 

The first time I ever experienced vertigo was about 10 years ago. I was hanging out at my friend's pool and suddenly I couldn’t even walk straight. I was so dizzy I had to be carried to the car and it was there that the nausea turned into vomiting. No fun at all. I could tell that the source of the imbalance was coming from my ear which had been ringing and what I could only describe as a stuffy, cloudy feeling. It eventually got bad enough that I drug my uninsured self to an ear doctor. I pretty much wasted $400 for them to do some tests and have a Doctor say "Yep, you don't hear as well on the left side. As far as the ringing goes some people like to use music as a way to distract from the irritation that intensifies in silence."

 My ear issues have come and gone since then. I mostly just deal with it, but over the past couple years it seems to have gotten worse. I have been embarrassed to talk about it because I don't like to seem like a hypochondriac. I feel like it could look like a desperate attempt to compete with my daughter's deafness. The truth is though, I know I don't hear well at all from the left side. I realized just how bad when I had ear buds in and I swore the left side wasn't working... until I put it in my right ear. After doing some online research I diagnosed myself with Tinnitus (this was about two months ago). Tinnitus basically just means ringing in the ears.

On Friday I had another rare episode of vertigo where it felt like my eyes were scanning the room diagonally and rapidly, but it was all involuntary. Up down. Up down. Up down. The room was spinning except I couldn't see behind me so to me spinning isn't even the right word. I started freaking out a little bit and told Z to get my phone. I hunched forward and when it ceased I said "that was trippy" which is a word I never use. Then I was able to get to a plastic bag just in time to loose my lunch (via the upchuck). This happened again on Monday (in a Kroger parking lot) and Tuesday. Each episode was usually followed by covering my face with a  wet rag and always falling asleep.

After a little more online research about tinnitus and vertigo I found one article after another that had my symptoms written out with complete accuracy. 

• Dizziness or vertigo, often with nausea and vomiting

• Ringing or roaring in the ear (tinnitus)

• Fluctuating hearing loss

• A feeling of fullness or pressure in the ear

and there was a name for it 

Ménière's disease

The Mayo Clinic says a diagnosis of Meniere's disease requires:

• Two spontaneous episodes of vertigo, each lasting 20 minutes or longer
• Hearing loss verified by a hearing test on at least one occasion
• Tinnitus or aural fullness
• Exclusion of other known causes of these sensory problems

That's it. That's me exactly. On top of that it can first appear in your early twenties (like for me), the vertigo is followed by episodes of fatigue (check), and most enlightening to me was how the hearing loss fluctuates in the early stages, but eventually becomes permanent (so I am not crazy). Some of the things I read were kind of scary like no cure and no known cause. But in some cases it is just considered "mildly irritating", which is how I feel most of the time (ha ha). I just laid out all of the worst aspects of it over the course 10 years. This probably makes it sound terrifying, but most of the time it's just a mildly irritating frustration that I have learned to deal with. 

So that is why my blog has been a little quiet lately. Well, that is one of probably 50 reasons why. There is a lot happening right now. But as far as my newly diagnosed disease, I am first of all just glad to have a name for it and an idea of what is going on. And even though medicine may not be able to cure it I know the great physician, the ultimate healer, my savior Jesus Christ and I have peace in that.