Hi everybody! I’m so glad to see you all here, and thank you so much for the warm welcome :). I feel like joining up here is like an AA-type moment when I stand up and admit to myself and everyone else that I have MAV! (Even though I have acknowledged it for awhile, it was not easy for me to accept!–Many thanks to all of you who have helped me come to grips with this.)
Hello, Scott, Pam, Tess, Rich, Bonnie & Howie–it’s very good to connect with you all again. I hope you are all doing well these days! I’ve missed chatting with you guys. Hi, Marci–I look forward to talking with you!
Book–Hello! I just wanted to say that it is extremely difficult to diagnose these things, and really BPPV and MAV are often closely related. I am blessed to have finally found a wonderful expert in vestibular problems (she’s on the VEDA board), and she is helping me navigate the symptoms. Docs surely don’t know everything yet about these problems.
But essentially, your medical history will give the best clues to what’s going on with you, as well as having a well-trained person examine your eye movements with the special goggles at different times. If your eyes act in specific ways in specific movements, it will indicate BPPV, which can be treated with various maneuvers. The migraine diagnosis is based on lots of things like your headache history, family history, history of motion sensitivity, and other symptoms…like I get frequent lip tingling, scalp soreness, sound sensitivity, headaches; I’ve also had light flashes and temporary hearing loss.
As for the VN, that diagnosis for me is based mostly on my initial symptoms. I had an abnormal VNG to begin with (and continue to have), but I did have normal calorics. It was really just the fact that the dizzies came out of nowhere, seemed to be in response to a root canal (which can trigger the virus implicated in VN), and that it hit hard with nausea, etc, and hasn’t let up since, but has gotten gradually better. I also have nystagmus that indicates to my doc some vestibular damage; somehow it’s different from the BPPV…I think it involves my eyes twitching about when I track things with them, etc. Still, MAV could’ve started the whole thing too. Not sure if I’ll ever know. I could really write a book about this, so I’ll stop here!! 
Hi there, Dizzy in AZ–
Well, my first symptoms were acute dizziness, nausea, and anxiety. I could only eat bread or similar for about a month…I also could not read for 6 weeks (my eyes must’ve been bopping around with nystagmus, but I didn’t realize it then). I pretty much stayed primarily in bed for 2 months and then still mostly housebound for 6 months…fatigue was also a huge thing for me; very unusual for me…couldn’t do normal things without feeling exhausted. Still can’t, but it is much better. I have had major intolerance to head movement…in any direction would produce nystagmus at first. Took months to subside to current level of still off but not so severe. I think those were the major things… To me, your symptoms do sound like what many describe MAV as being like, although of course I do not know your whole story. You’ve come to the right place to figure it all out though!
Take care everyone,
Violet