Hi all- I feel I have an impossible decision ahead of me. Quick background, have had MAV (mainly dizziness/imbalance with less frequent headaches) for 6 years now. For the past 1.5 years I have gotten worse, have become housebound, can barely walk without assistance and cannot do any household chores. I have constant dizziness, frequent head pressure, frequent eye pain and occasional headaches, and days in a row of blurred vision, among many other symptoms that come and go.
Anyway, I tried Amitriptyline 3 times last year (back when the doctors gave me a longer lasting but not a vestibular suppressant benzo to try to help along with it) and each time the dizziness increased significantly, and I never felt I could get over the “hump” to where the side effects would settle down, especially as I am home alone all day long. However, the increased dizziness it caused back then is basically where I am right now on a NORMAL day. My question is, if I try the Amitriptyline again (this time I do have a better benzo to help, a vestibular suppressant Xanax) will the dizziness get even worse than I feel? Is the initial ramp up in symptoms proportional to how one feels at baseline or is there a limit to how much it can ramp things up?
My other option from the doctors is to try Lexapro for the 3rd time, which gave me nasty nausea and heartburn to the point where I couldn’t eat much, which made it in turn harder to tolerate the medicine. I tried it a 2nd time with Zofran (an anti-emetic/anti-nausea med) which helped the nausea but seemed to react strangely with the Lexapro in my head and gave me a severe headache and lightheadness and over 24 hours of a sense of impending doom.
Right now the doctors want me to try either of these again, and I can’t seem to make myself do either. I’m trying to figure out which of the two I could possibly tolerate long enough to get through the side effects. I start both at VERY low doses, most people would probably not feel a thing from the doses I start with but I have become very sensitive to medicines. I have had so many bad experiences from trying medicines I feel like I cannot touch this decision with a 10 foot pole. But in the meantime I keep getting worse and worse as the months go by and I know I need to do something.
Thanks in advance for any input! (And yes, before anyone suggests it, I have tried Nortriptyline as well and that made me even dizzier than the Amitriptyline)