Imagine
sitting at work in an elementary school grading work and you can't
make out the writing because it's blurry, that was me in 2010. Right
before (like a week) my Gastroparesis started came chronic vertigo
and chronic migraines—go big or go home, baby! I ended up in urgent
care because I couldn't see straight and couldn't stand up.
Naturally, what do the doctors do? Had me lay down, sit up, turn my
head, everything you DON'T want to do when you have vertigo.
It was a nightmare! I was sent home with scapolamine patches—I
think they thought I wanted to go on a cruise—and they called it a
night. The patches didn't work, so within days I was in my doctor's
office looking for relief. What I got was Dramamine—more seasick
remedies. That didn't work either. The interesting thing about my
vertigo was that I felt like I was on a conveyor belt. The ceiling
and the floor looked like they were moving like something you would
see in a factory...no spinning...no whirling...it was Conveyor Belt
City for me. That totally threw the doctors for a loop. Not to
mention I didn't have ringing in the ears. If I had these symptoms
they would have known that it was Meniere's Disease. Another
possibility was Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV), however,
I don't have crackling in my ears, so that ruled it out.
Since
I was a conundrum wrapped in an enigma tied in a zebra striped bow, I
was sent off to physical therapy. While this was VERY
interesting therapy, by this time, I was suffering from REALLY
bad vitamin B deficiency from the not-yet diagnosed Gastroparesis, so
I was walking with a cane AND walking with vertigo on a floor
that looked like a conveyor belt. Therapy was not fun, it was not
easy, and it got me nowhere. I saw no improvement from it, so it was
terminated. Eventually I was sent off to LA to see if I qualified for
a trial (or something) for a little thing called Mal de DebarkmentSyndrome—say THAT ten times fast. However, I didn't feel as
though I was on a boat, it wasn't a swaying motion, it was a CONVEYOR
BELT, very different, so I didn't qualify and back home I went to
just deal with it.
With
the vertigo kind of a head-scratcher, the doctors moved on to the
migraines. MRIs were clear—YAY--showing that it wasn't a
tumor and it wasn't MS (since I was walking strange from the Vitamin
B deficiency they thought it was a possibility). The Topomax seemed
to be working, but my neurologist just was so flummoxed by what I was
experiencing, so it was off to UCLA to see a migraine specialist.
What.
A. Waste. Of. Time.
What
I gleaned from the specialist was that there are no such things as
sinus headaches—I beg to differ, my face has wanted to fall off
from the pressure of the snot in my sinus', but whatever, Sir. I have
“a migraine syndrome”--so specific in his diagnosis he was! He
had me bump up the amount of Topomax I was taking in a day. And I got
to pay $250 for that! But I'm not bitter, no I'm not! It took a
couple of weeks, but the increased Topomax seemed to actually have an
affect on my vertigo as well as my migraines—or maybe it was just
my determination to get out there and beat all of this stuff, who
knows. I went from barely being able to make it to the end of my
driveway to going up my street (it's less than ¼ mile long) to going
around the corner to going around the country block. I saw the doctor
at UCLA on Valentine's Day 2011 and I went back to work in April
2011—how 'bout them apples!
In
the years since returning to work I have had bouts of vertigo that
have lasted several days to several weeks for no explainable reason.
I just do my best to work through it and make sure that people around
me know that they may have to catch me if I do an unexplained
pirouette walking down the hall. My migraines, like the vertigo, are
just as transient and just as strange. Unlike most migraine
sufferers, I do not have light, sound, or smell sensitivity, nor do I
have auras; so you wouldn't really ever know that I'm having a
migraine unless I told you. I call myself a Functional
Migrainer—remember that I coined that phrase when it goes viral.
Only when the pain gets too intense do I have to give up and go lie
down. About two years ago I was prescribed Imitrex to take for acute
migraine attacks and that seems to help, but Excedrin Migraine isn't
too shabby either.
Thankfully
I don't encounter migraines nor vertigo very often, but when I do, I
have my handy-dandy Imitrex or Excedrin Migraine with me!
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