Hello,
My name is Sara and I stumbled across this website accidentally while googling something about the medication for Topiramate. I couldnāt help but look around various topics and gain enlightenment and feel sympathy for various users on here. Because I can relate first hand to a lot of the symptoms and the emotional ties that the attacks and vertigo brings. I was debating on whether I ought to join or not but I decided that I should. Because recently Iāve been having massive problems with vertigo that has put my life on hold which is extremely depressing.
I feel that I should warn ahead of time that this post might be long because I wish to introduce myself, in a wider scope of who I am. And I wish to explain of how my lifelong relationship with hearing and vertigo has been. I sincerely hope to make friends with you here as I could sincerely use them. I will make a full list of symptoms at the end of this post.
As I stated before, my name is Sara. I just turned 30 on the 3rd of April. I used to live in Michigan but I moved to Washington state about 7 years ago. I moved here to be closer with my ex, which was a 6 year relationship which ended about a year ago. I am an only child, I am a proud parent of a 3 year old pomeranian dog named, Kimchi. I work in the aviation business. (Locally. I knew from the start I could never do a traveling gig.) My parents moved over from Michigan to be here with me and I am currently with them right now. (Given my current state of vertigo, it is a life-saver.) For hobbies, I enjoy drawing, singing, and, occasionally gaming when I have the time to. I definitely enjoy cooking and baking, and, definitely enjoy interior home decorating. I would consider myself to be a person more on the introverted side than extroverted.
As far my vertigo problems go, they stretch back to as far back as young as 5 years old, I believe.Probably even before the age of 5. I was born with issues straightaway, I wasnāt technically supposed to live throughout the night and if I did, I was to have an array of problems. Everything from being blind to deaf, mental issues, mobility issues. It seemed my Mother caught some sort of virus when she was pregnant with me and the doctor had ordered her to delay the birth since I looked so small? Or at least thatās what Iāve been informed.
I had some delays with milestones with walking but therapy helped me with that. As far as I can tell, I have no signs of visual issues nor mental issues. The only thing that did stem from the pregnancy was hearing loss. The school caught on in Kindergarten when they realized I wasnāt responding to my name as fast as the other children. Hearing tests did confirm this and I had bilateral hearing loss. My left side is near deaf and my right side is ok but not the best. I was fitted with hearing aids. Now around this age is my earliest symptoms of vertigo spells Iād experience. They would occur mainly at night while I was sleeping. It would be rare to get them during the day time but I do recall getting one at school during gym once. I blamed the animal cracker at the time.
At the time, since I was so little and I didnāt really understand what was going on. I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming my head off. Thrashing around on my bed, being generally confused and very very dizzy. Generally, either one or both parents would rush into my room and turn on the lights. Which led to very long hours of my parent(s) being up having to watch over me. I also didnāt understand the impact of my words until many years later upon reflection but chanting that I wanted to die for hours, probably wasnāt the best choice of words. But these nights were mostly spent vomiting for hours, laying down occasionally trying to sleep in frustration but vertigo preventing it, and, having the television on. I also eventually got the stupidest idea, it seemed wise at the time, to crawl around until I made myself completely exhausted. It didnāt help at all but gave me carpet burns along with injury. Typically these night vertigo attacks lasted around 3-4 hours max before it stopped. The only way I knew I stopped was when my body started to shiver and Iād get the chills.
Iād be getting these attacks pretty often but not so often where it was affecting my life that I couldnāt go on with it. Iād just need a day of recovery and Iād be back at school. I believe it was around the mid or late 90ās that more research of the inner ears disorders had been done. And my Father had just randomly popped onto the internet while I was in the middle of a vertigo attack one night. The website he was one claimed that MSG and salt were a bad combo. In my household, MSG and salt was a very common food usage and not surprisingly I was also big into eating instant ramen packages as well. So I thought, well, let me try cutting back on the ramen and letās see what happens. And there was a such a huge improvement. It was night and day. Since then my Mother has cut out lot of recipes with msg for me. Iāve been fortunate to find that Korean brand ramen do not carry MSG in their instant ramen packages and I am able to indulge guilt free occasionally.
Since then my nightly vertigo attacks were reduced to about 1 to 2 a year. When I was a kid, I was able to do roller coasters without fear. I did rides with loops, I rode my bike (even managing to master the superman trick), spun around in computer chairs. All sorts of things that I took for granted that I cannot do nowadays. I was fearless of dizziness and I had no boundaries and took no prisoners. Sure I had the occasional feeling of being knocked off course but merely shrugged it off. I remember having a few problems with my sinuses. Both involving the common colds that stayed a little longer than they shouldāve and turned into sinusitis. One was severe where it plugged my hearing completely and I was just about deaf. I can clearly remember the worry in my Mom eyeās as she tried to talk to me. The way her eyebrows scrunched together. But eventually I regained my hearing with no issues. I just thought that my life would be practically simple in regards with balance and hearing. Wearing hearing aids and deal with some occasional vertigo. But things changed drastically by time I reached senior year of High School.
When I was in 12th grade, I started to have some ringing in my ears. At first I thought, itās just the ringing in the ears that come and go. But they didnāt go away. It stayed and made itās home in my head since 2007. Now I am partially to blame since I was misusing my headphones to hear my music louder to compensate for my hearing loss. It was a habit I formed that Iād do before my classes started for school. At the time, I was going nuts and I was having headaches and having trouble falling asleep because at night the ringing was so much louder. I was worried that something was wrong and went to see my ENT.
My ENT wanted to rule out that it wasnāt any sort of brain tumors or cancers forming within my head. So I went for an MRI and that came negative. I remember at the time also taking an VEMP(?) I donāt exactly recall which form of the vertigo eye test it was. I do recall them putting electrodes on my forehead at the end and telling me to just relax. I donāt remember clearly the results of the test, other than my eyes and inner ears were not working as well as they could be. And that I needed to do some physical therapy for the vertigo. Which I did and I did practice at home and I did do them occasionally. But I honestly did not find them to be much help.
But as time went on, I got used to my tinnitus (as I later found out it to be.) I donāt remember what a silent room sounds like completely. Although once or twice, my tinnitus has stopped just enough for peace and silence. Then to flair up again, so thereās that. My life went on and I just figured that was that I was going to have to live with. It seemed bearable with hearing aids as well. I eventually moved across the country to be with my (now ex) boyfriend. It turns out that this is where most of my headache of vertigo kicks in. The most misery Iāve experienced with it to date.
I moved to Washington and things started off pretty decent. Itās a nice change of pace and I didnāt exactly have a job just yet. But I was searching and my exās truck died and I remember he was trying to set up a deal with a coworker to buy a vehicle. But at the time we didnāt so I was walking a lot and buying a lot of things desperately needed for the apartment and carrying by hand. One day I went to the mall by the house and I ate some pizza and began to walk home and then I started to get dizzy. I was in a lot of pain too and it wasnāt a typical normal vertigo spell but I was dizzy for sometime. My ex wasnāt able to get home until late at night and this was the first time heād seen me with a vertigo spell. He said, I looked like a turtle who flipped over and couldnāt get upright again. And somehow that stuck with me since then. He said, it looked like I had severe dehydration possibly from all the walking I couldāve been doing since then. I got through the night and that was just the tip of the iceberg of problems.
At that point I started to get this vertigo. Iāve never had this type of vertigo before and it was honestly just annoying. It felt like a lag? Like a video game lag? Where every time I moved my head, my eyes would take forever to catch up to where my head moved. I thought maybe itād go away eventually. Except it didnāt. I had no insurance at the time either. So I was trying to hold out on trying make a special trip to the doctor. Maybe it just needed some time. I ended up getting a job, a car, trying to just make most of my life with this vertigo. Driving was hell I needed to take plenty of breaks but eventually I got back on insurance and I was able to see a doctor. I went to see a regular doctor who had no idea what was going on. The ENT I saw had no idea but sent me to a physical therapist and it was there that I had an Epley maneuver done and lo-and behold, afterwards, the lagging just seemed to go away. Life had resumed back to normal and I was just beyond relieved.
So I just went on with my life, I just thought, maybe it was just a weird fluke with me moving to Washington and my body just had a hard time adjusting. That lasted over the span of several months before I got relief. But then a few years later, I got hit with another ballpark of vertigo. Currently I canāt remember the hard details of it except that it was like a vertigo that was hitting me everyday. And I definitely know that I had called out twice in a row and the company policy was that you couldnāt call out three times or youād be sent to HR to be dealt with. I called out twice and I went back on my third day and I was sitting at my office desk. Trying to to deal with two computer screens at one. My vertigo couldnāt handle it and I was sent home and it counted as a third day against me.
My ex (in his judgement) took me to HR which was offsite the airport which I wanted nothing to do with. I just wanted to go home and lay down and make the world stop spinning. So the very nice lady at HR gave me an FMLA sheet and told me to get this filled out by a doctor. Which I got signed off and I was able to get some time off work to recover and it gave me enough relief to get back to work to be at least somewhat functioning. From what I can remember of that episode anyways.
Since that episode I didnāt have anything until of last year. It started off with pressure in my head and unable to pop it. Occasional clicking sounds in my jaw it seems. Feeling pressure behind my eyes as well. The biggest culprit was this new type of tinnitus! It was beating in my head in time with my heartbeat. Like I could hear my heartbeat in my head. I could also hear the steps I took and at times I couldnāt hear anything but my tinnitus which made work very difficult to get through. I couldnāt sleep at night without putting on music at full volume to distract the heartbeat in my head. Then I started to get dizzy from the pressure within my head. I would have the night time vertigo attacks but then, Iād have them in the day time. Iād also have the sensation of being dizzy constantly. I started to have to call out often.
I went to a new ENT near the new home location of my parentsā home. I explained everything to him and he straight out said to me that there was nothing he could do for me. Had me in his room for maybe 10 mins top and sent me into the hallway to get a blood pressure done which was normal. I was beyond angry. To be fair, I shouldāve noticed how quick patients seemed to be coming in and out. I didnāt go back.
My Mother came back from Korea and she brought antibiotics and I took them and it seemed to cleared it up a bit and went back to normal. Thought maybe there was an infection or something and it was cleared up.
But it came back closer to the end of last year and started to have the pulsating tinnitus (I found out the term for it), Iām now unable to pop my ears or have the sensation of them popped. If theyāre popped, theyāre instantly sealed again. I did have my jaw pop once and it helped the first time but it only made the pulsating tinnitus return again. At times the pulsating tinnitus is so loud that I canāt hear anything again. Plus voices pitches become warped and sometimes much deeper. Thereās so much pressure in my ears that it builds up behind my eyes. Like it feels like my eyes are throbbing sometimes in time with the tinnitus which makes things appear to be moving (when they arenāt.) I have also noticed now my eyes constantly get red and bloodshot. I have sound sensitivity at times which can add to vertigo. Iāve now been getting headaches and this feeling like something is squeezing around my spinal cord in my neck at times. I occasionally get a tingling sensation in my forehead too. My vertigo attacks only used to be once or twice a year. Now Iām getting dizzy or vertigo nearly almost everyday or feeling off balance at the very least. I definitely have nystagmus. I have to keep my hair tied back and wear a headband to keep the baby hair out of my face. I also been wearing my hearing aid 24/7 even when I sleep. Thatās how bad I feel, I feel like I need in or Iāll get sick or something. Iāve been going to work and going on the computer and falling to the floor because I felt so dizzy. I canāt watch tv nor youtube as I much as I used to. I can watch very little videos without feel too bad. I canāt drive. I feel paranoid about getting vertigo attacks and I honestly been feeling very depressed by the sudden change in my life.
I went to a new ENT who has been nothing but a trooper who ordered an VNG test and an MRI. He thought I might of had Superior Semicircular Canal Dehiscence (SSCD) which is like a bone opening in the canals in the inner ears. Sadly it wasnāt because it could of been treatable by surgery. I honestly keep thinking it is or maybe itās wishful thinking. Itās also not Meniereās disease either. Which the MRI came back clear of brain tumors/cancers. Said I was a little stuffy in the sinuses. Might be having migraines. The VNG test came back saying that my results looked something that a 90 year old result might look like. I think my left ear wasnāt really responding much to the hot/cold air test. Both ears didnāt so well generally. So Iā;m going to be doing some physical therapy. He wants me to see an ophthalmologist. And heās sending me to his friend who is specifically just an ear doctor. The ENT I saw knows some ear stuff but he does mostly sinuses stuff and such. So he wants to make sure I get thoroughly checked out.
I also went to see a neurologist who checked me out and he thinks Iām having migraines by my descriptions of the headaches. So currently Iām on Topiramate 25 mg and gradually working my way up to 50 mg. Then returning to the neurologist and seeing if it helps. While it hasnāt been a full week yet, I have seen some improvement with the Topiramate. I am able to actually leave my bedroom and leave the house. Iāve been stuck in my room for days. I am just beyond stressed and paranoid because I just donāt know when itāll strike. I staying calm the best key of action and Iām trying my best. If anyone has any suggestions or insight, Iāll take it.
Iād also like to apologize for the long post. I will edit just to make all of my symptoms clearer to read and less confusing. If this is too long, please let me know and Iāll be happy to omit my long post as well.I just wanted to paint the full picture of the problem of how drastic of a change this is for me. Thank you. Sara.
