It seems most people talk about the water torture part of the this test but I know there is a part 1 and 2 to it also. Can anyone who has had this tell me what these parts are like? I understand there are flashing lights you have to follow with your eyes and something about wavy lines. I am extremely sensitive to flashing lights and wavy lines and I would think others here are also. Did you find this part bothered you? Just thinking about it is enough to give me a carsick headache.
I’ve pretty much ruled out that I will put myself through this test (I do not like to vomit at all) but I am wondering if they might be able to determine anything about what is wrong with me if I do all but the caloric part.
The part with the lights is much like you described. There was a light bar on the wall with small red lights that would blink on and off in a sequence. I sat on an exam table and followed the lights with my eyes as directed. It didn’t really bother me.
It was the torture of the second part that did me in. For my test, part 2 consisted of blowing cold air in one ear for a minute or so, then making me lay there dizzy as all get out while reciting names starting with each letter of the alphabet and following the technicians finger with my eyes. Then they repeated the process with cold air in the other ear. Next, they did the same thing with warm air in each ear one at a time. Each round got progressively worse. I was vomiting by the end.
The first part is exactly what Marci said…and i also did ok. It’s the 2nd part where they put cold water in my right ear and that triggers the vertigo to begin and i am extremely motion intolerant…so in about 30 seconds i told the Tech person to stop the test. I had to vomit within a few minutes. It was a very uncomfortable test for me…but bookworm…you might not have any problems? The Tech person who administered the test said only 3% of people who go thru this test become sick. By the way…it was considered an incomplete exam because it was not finished. A week later i began to have Intermittant Tinnitus…doctors said there is no way that the ENG could have brought that on…but i have my reservations.
Marci and Joseph thank you for helping to describe the test from he**.
I thought there were a total of 3 parts, the flashing lights, the caloric and something else but I guess I am wrong. I know they make you recite alphabetical words and football teams and things like that to keep your mind off being dizzy, but geeesh!! does something like that really make your forget about it?
Much as I am afraid of suffering terrible vertigo and throwing up I am also afraid I wouldn’t have any problems and would feel nothing which would probably confirm a meniere’s diagnosis which I definitely don’t want to hear.
This is a stupid question but is there a way to replicate the test at home? Could I pour water in my ear to see if it makes me start spinning? kind of like a trial before the real thing? or maybe it doesn’t work that way.
Joseph if the tinnitus happened to me the way it happened to you I would also wonder if the ENG somehow caused it. If it was responsible though, logically I would think it would happen sooner than a week but in reality not necessarily so. I know from my reading that vertigo following a head injury can start weeks after the injury so it seems that you also could have a delayed reaction.
Would you really want to try and duplicate that test at home??
I remember the fear I had when they told me I needed that test, and I did NOT want to do it(and I never did). I was terrified of actually sending myself into a spinning episode that wouldn’t stop. I was terrified that I had menieres, that I had MS, that I had a brain tumor. In the end, I didn’t have the test done. I had the MRI’s , and all of the other stuff, but not the ENG. I figured if I had menieres, there was nothing they could do for me anyway. Then I found this place. I discovered that its thought menieres overlaps MAV many times.
I’ve been blessed. I don’t have (yet anyway) any hearing loss pointing towards menieres. I’ve had luck with MAV treatment. (propanolol and diet). I’m not saying you (or anyone else) doesn’t have menieres. But do you have the hearing loss so commonly associated with menieres? I guess, reading some of the negatives that people have said folllowing this test, if I had the hearing loss pointing to menieres, I might consider putting myself through that torture. But then I ask myself for what?
I’m not trying to talk you out of the test. I’m only saying, I remember the absolute heartache I felt when I didn’t show up that day for my ENG. I wanted to know so badly what the He** was wrong with me, but I couldn’t make myself go. I just couldn’t.
If you don’t make it to your ENG test, don’t be hard on yourself. And for God’s sake - don’t try and do it yourself at home. You know your body better than anyone.
I’m sorry if I missed it before, but do you have any hearing loss?
Kim, I have a small amount of hearing loss at the high frequencies, not low, which is not typical of menieres. My hearing at the low is less acute than the mid range but still well within normal limits. During vertigo attacks I do not notice any change is hearing or tinnitus (well, once I had a tiny bit of tinnitus but it wasn’t much worse than usual), I don’t have that roaring that some people have. I also have photophobia during attacks. The last doctor I saw said I have atypical menieres because of my lack of hearing loss. Next time I saw him he said I have labyrinthitis and not mm because I have no hearing loss. Everything I read said with labs one has hearing loss and I told him that he said that’s not true. (I’m not seeing him anymore.)
Like you, I know in my heart I can’t go through with the test. I would try the first part if I thought that would help with the diagnosis, but there is no way I could live a normal life if I knew I would most likely be having an attack of vertigo and vomiting in x number of days.
I figure if I could try it at home at least I could stop at the first indication that there would be any vertigo at all rather than let them keep on pouring the water in.
Bookworm -
I understand. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I was telling you what to do or what not to do.
In fact, when I was writing that post, I could just visualize myself shooting water in my ear, laying on the bathroom floor, unable to get up, going “what did I do that for”??? :lol:
Hey bookworm,
yes I had some of these test way back 14 years ago,
following the lights did’nt bother me,
I didnt have the air put through my ears like Marci though.
With the water test, the tech told me to count backwards from 100, so that it would take my mind off the dizziness, and help me focus and not faint from the dizziness, I laughed about that , because the dizziness I felt was only slightly worse than what I feel on a day to day basis.
I told her that! and she said youre joking, most people spin out with dizziness.
But I will say, for a day after all those tests, my rocking** was **slighty worse.
Hey bookworm,
yes I had some of these test way back 14 years ago,
following the lights did’nt bother me,
I didnt have the air put through my ears like Marci though.
With the water test, the tech told me to count backwards from 100, so that it would take my mind off the dizziness, and help me focus and not faint from the dizziness, I laughed about that , because the dizziness I felt was only slightly worse than what I feel on a day to day basis.
I told her that! and she said youre joking, most people spin out with dizziness.
But I will say, for a day after all those tests, my rocking** was **slighty worse.
jen
— End quote
Hmm that’s interesting… What did the results say? If you didn’t get really dizzy, that is a clear sign of (pretty big) vestibular damage. If it works properly, you get really dizzy. No response = virtually dead nerve. Needless to say there are intermediates, though.
I know in my heart I can’t go through with the test.
— End quote
Then listen to your inner voice.
I refuse to have an ENG or rotary chair test.
I’ve had ENT’s mess up my right ear several times now and it wasn’t even with an ENG.
I had a test called Tympanometry done, and the tech said, “now this won’t hurt a bit”
Next thing I know I yelled “Jesus Christ” and yanked out the plugs she put in my ears.
It did indeed elicit pain, and it felt like someone knocked my brain sideways, like a croquet ball!
It really flipped me out, and she said “that’s not normal.” Well, gee, no kidding lady. :lol:
Tympanometry applies pressure inside the ear. Well, if your ear is sensitive to pressure, that’s telling in and of itself.
I already knew my ears were sensitive to pressure because I had to stop riding high-speed elevators. The pressure!
So an ENT said, if I hated Tympanometry, I’d really hate an ENG. So I refused to be tortured.
I have had two ENG’s. The first one was a three part test, part one with the little red light that you follow with your eyes, part two they quickly lay you back on the table with your head pointed one way or the other, and part three was the water torture. The second ENG I had was a little more thorough and had four parts, I was put in a rotating chair and they tracked my eyes as they spun me in circles.
Heather, so that is what that test is called. I have had it done twice now, seperate from the ENG. The first time was just a bunch of pressure that wasn’t painful. The second time was in the other ear and was as painful as you describe.
Was it you who was once DX’d with Meniere’s?
The ENT thought I had it and I just rolled my eyes. I do not have the symptoms.
(Has anyone not been misdiagnosed with Meniere’s? ) :roll:
At one point, early on, I seriously wondered if I had a perilymph fistula.
PF people have ear pressure sensitivity, but there were other reasons I thought I had a PF as well.
Yes, I was one of the people on this forum misdiagnosed with meniere’s. I was diagnosed solely based off of a hearing test and that ear pressure test you described. The ENT ignored the fact that the ENG he eventually had me do came back normal, and that my hearing kept returning to normal. It was when he wanted to do surgery that I started researching my symptoms and realized that I might not have meniere’s.
BTW, I had never heard of PF before, until you mentioned it in a previous post. I did some research on it and found that I have a couple of symptoms that don’t match MAV or meniere’s or BPPV that do fit PF. Specifically, I get a dripping sensation that I both hear and feel. I also have a tube in the same ear and if I am lying on my side fluid does leak out of the tube into my outer ear. I also experience tullio’s when I am experiencing my more severe dizzy spells. Then there are the Tumarkin’s Otolithic Crisis falls that I experience. These don’t fit in with anything that I have read about, but PF seems to be the closest I have found so far. Can’t say that is the cause of these symptoms though as PF appears to be something that heals on it’s own and goes away after a while.
Eventually your body learns to work with one ear and the spinning stops. One of the last resort treatments for meniere’s desease is to surgically cut the vestibular nerve. From people that I have communicated with, it causes havoc for a few weeks but then your body adjusts and things start to calm down.
I “believe” that I have nerve damage in my “bad” ear as I don’t react as violently to the caloric test in my bad ear, but I do get the spins. My good ear on the other hand, I might as well have drank a case of beer and gone on the nastiest spinning ride I can find at the amusement park.
Hi Brian,
I did read about the brain plasticity ect…
also knew about the cutting of the nerves as a last resort for meneires patients.
and how the brain normaly will resolve the issue, interesting.
I’ve never experiance true vertigo (spinning) until a couple of months ago,
when the med I was on went wrong, and my migrain became worse, and the fast spinning was only if I closed my eye’s.
Hmmmm?
Maybe there are three parts to the Eng. It has been a decade since i had it. The thing is…god forbid but if anyone decides to have the Eng done…and you end up with Tinnitus a week later…there is no way you can prove that it was due to the Eng. As far as performing the procedure at home (putting water in your ears)…i think that needs to be performed by a professional person. The Eng is just another test to help the process of elimination regarding various inner-ear issues.
I have had two ENG’s. The first one was a three part test, part one with the little red light that you follow with your eyes, part two they quickly lay you back on the table with your head pointed one way or the other, and part three was the water torture. The second ENG I had was a little more thorough and had four parts, I was put in a rotating chair and they tracked my eyes as they spun me in circles.
— End quote
Oh, yes, that is the second part where they put your head back - hall-pike maneuver or something like that. I’ve had that done in the doctor’s office and hate it so much. Moving my head fast like that makes me very carsick, not to mention the discomfort it gives my neck.
The rotating chair - there is no way I could go through that one!! I thank God no one has suggested it for me yet.
Geesh, where do these people come up with these tests?
Oh, yes, that is the second part where they put your head back - hall-pike maneuver or something like that. I’ve had that done in the doctor’s office and hate it so much. Moving my head fast like that makes me very carsick, not to mention the discomfort it gives my neck.
The rotating chair - there is no way I could go through that one!! I thank God no one has suggested it for me yet.
Geesh, where do these people come up with these tests?
— End quote
Funny thing for me is that the second part of the test will normally make my stomach try to run up my throat, but both times I took the test it caused me no problems. I couldn’t remember the name of the manuveur either, that’s why I keep calling it part 2.
I thought that the rotary chair would cause me problems, and to a small extent it did, but the resulsts were within normal enough parameters to rule out any type of inner ear disorder once I found a doctor that wasn’t going to ingore the test results.
I am glad that I took the test, even though it was torturous as it ruled out everything that hadn’t been ruled out, and eventually led to a proper diagnoses.
BTW, I had never heard of PF before, until you mentioned it in a previous post. I did some research on it and found that I have a couple of symptoms that don’t match MAV or meniere’s or BPPV that do fit PF.
— End quote
Let’s see. ummm do you ever recall something weird happening if you bent your head forward?
( As in bending head over/forward into a grocery cart, or bending over/forward into the trunk of your car.)
Did those movements ever cause you any symptoms or distress?
