Fuck Ménière's Disease

[NowhereMan]

Self medicate with alcohol.

Alternatively the therapy and b vitamins if you're feeling, understandably, down. Best of luck with this shitty situation though man.

[Teleku]

Alas, in the short term at least, I haven't touched Alcohol, Caffeine, Salt, or Sugar since this started.  All of which can possibly aggravate this shit, I'm told.  Once I stabilize and speak with the specialists, then I'll know more about how much my diet actually effects it and what I should be avoiding.  I really hope I don't have to give up alcohol for good.

You're not helping my anxiety very much.  

But fucking hell, that's terrible.

*hugs*   I wanted to tell you "At least it's not cancer" before, but this might have come across the wrong way.

Reading up on it on the web the descriptions mention that development is highly individual, including 'symptoms disappearing even after 5 years'. So don't assume that the worst case is exactly what's going to happen to you.

And like apocrypha said, see someone for the depression. I read three articles about it now and all of them say there is a need for 'psychosocial support' due to the strain caused by 'sudden and unexpected attacks'. So if you are feeling anxious now you seem to be a perfectly normal patient.  

Thank you.  And yes, when this very first started happening back 2 years ago, the first thing they worried about was that it was a tumor (talk about another anxiety spike).  I've had several CT scans (including one when I was in the ER on Tuesday), and nothing has been found.  So there's that.

[Venkman]

Jeezus man, sorry to hear you're going through this. I can't even imagine.

Minus the emphasis on hearing loss, have you/docs considered migraines? The remedies you described sound similar to migraine sufferers I know. And I mean real-migraines, not the "throw tylenol at it" ones on TV.

But also you are another shiny example of resilience and adaptability. Nobody is ever really "normal" per se. We're all some parts broken to a degree, constantly adapt to deal with things. You've been adapting to some crazy shit over the last few years. But hell, with less attention on hearing your brain can supercharge your eyes. X-ray vision or even lasers and shit! 

[Ruvaldt]

Sorry to hear about the health problems, Teleku.

Kava kava helped me with my anxiety.  I had a horrible spate of panic attacks and constant anxiety in early 2014 for about three months.  Nothing helped until I tried kava, and now I'm back to feeling like myself.  Sadly, I think it is banned in Poland.

[Krakrok]

My brother had surgery for Surfer's Ear and was having vertigo episodes.

He said these exercises seemed to help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTZfIv165sY

[Teleku]

So, an update.  Had a pretty rough first half of the week, with my hearing going from kind of tolerable to almost totally deaf randomly.  Also having some form of a vertigo attack almost every other day from Friday to Tuesday.  However, starting Wednesday, my hearing actually recovered to a better point than it had been during any time after my initial attack a week and a half ago.  Still not back to normal, but I could actually hear people as they mostly sound with little distortion, it was just a lot quieter.  My hearing is a little worst today, but still on a better side.  It feels so fucking GREAT to actually be able to communicate with people like a somewhat normal human being. 

I’ve also had no vertigo for the last two days.  Between those two things, I’ve gotten two full days of work in for the first time in a week, so feeling pretty positive now, and my stress/anxiety has dropped.  Hopefully this trend continues (though I’ve found it can go from great to terrible in the course of a night).

It also seems I will be getting what is called a ‘medical evacuation’ back to the US very soon.  They're going to fly me back to see a specialist who can hopefully give me the final word on what’s going on.  Sounds like they are going to send me to the Cleveland Clinic because the State Department has a very good relationship with them.  Seems fairly highly ranked, though I’ve personally never heard of it.  Does anybody know much about it?  I could also pull John Hopkins, which obviously is very famous.  Probably doesn’t matter, I imagine both of them have similar top end specialists, but I’m still in my freak out OCD stage.  But hey, I've never been to Cleveland (or anywhere in the mid-west).  So I guess that might be cool.

[Viin]

Cleveland Clinic is a very good place. Donno how they stack up in specialists for inner ear stuff, but generally speaking they are top notch.