Anyone else NOT get headaches, or only get insignificant ones?
I KNOW I’m a migraineur because of past visual auras, and after having spent many years seeing ENT and neurology with NO DIAGNOSIS OF ANYTHING, no specific ear or neurological problem found, everything ruled out, and having done a lot of my own reading and connecting with people on dizziness forums, I am convinced my dizziness is due to migraine.
But try getting any doctor to believe that! I brought it up at one point or another with probably every GP and specialist I saw. They would not say anything in reply, or they’d say they didn’t think migraine was causing my dizziness. (Even the otoneurologist who studied under Baloh said this.) But of course they didn’t say what they DID think was causing it.
EVERYTHING else has been ruled out, and the only tentative diagnoses I ever got–perilymph fistula and MS–were sooner or later ruled out, too. NO OTHER CAUSE has ever been given for my dizziness. I’ve tried various classes of meds (prednisone, diuretics, anti-anxiety drugs, vestibular suppressants, etc.) and nothing has worked, except that stimulant-type meds (Provigil, Ritalin, and now Strattera) have helped my concentration greatly, although not the dizziness itself.
And yet… STILL I cannot get any doctor to consider that I have MAV. The otoneurologist even said that for migraine, “we treat the pain, not the dizziness.” I cannot get this taken seriously without having headaches–which I don’t. Just sometimes a slight one, but mostly just a pressure-y, slightly headachy sensation in the front of my head.
Anyone else have this problem?
I recently read somewhere on this board that Dr. Hain does phone consults, and I thought I might try that. If I could get SOME expert to say that migraine might be the cause of my dizziness, maybe the local docs would believe me!?
(My GP did, at my persistent request, prescribe nortriptyline today–see my other thread–but I know he was still unconvinced.)
I feel VERY LUCKY not to have headaches, but it’s kind of like all those poor dizzy people I’ve “met” over the years who cannot get their dizziness investigated seriously, are told it’s just anxiety, etc.; I believe that only because I was “lucky” enough to have a hearing loss was I taken seriously (at least initially) on the dizziness. (I was never taken very seriously on the neuro stuff, though). The doctors wanna see something dramatic like that.
Thoughts? Any other non-headache migraineurs out there?
Nancy