Hi, I’m Jessica

Hello everyone my name is Jessica.
I was recently diagnosed with vestibular migraine about a month ago. I am an occupational therapist and I currently work in a hospital and I’m very familiar with a lot of different type of diagnoses and vestibular disorders that I have encountered with my patients. I however during my six years of being a therapist, have never heard of vestibular migraine.

My symptoms initially started when I started drinking a lot of green tea. In terms of life stressors, I have been in a lot of pain for about a month due to dental issues and I’ve been on five different series of antibiotics prior to the start of symptoms. (I do believe this may be one of main reasons I started having symptoms)

I’m in the process of figuring out all my triggers but currently the biggest ones are hot showers and light Sensitivity. I’ve had two major attacks during the last week with two of them being hot and Luke warm showers. My dizziness started as something that wasn’t affecting my every day life but currently I am dizzy every day and have been out of work for about a week.

My best abort medication appears to be Tylenol at this time and sumatriptan does not work at all. I have currently started on a medication called propananol (beta blocker), And I am determined to wean off of any medication that works for me after period of time as my husband and I have recently wanted to start a family.

In terms of mental health I was in a really dark place last week when I was put out of work. I realize the importance of knowing that you are able to complete your roles as a wife and a daughter and a coworker at work. I am usually a positive person, so I have been doing better in terms of the mental health this week. I try to tell myself that dizziness is just dizziness and that I will find out a way to conquer this all and live my life normally like I did the way before.

I know that everyone else’s journey is different, but I encourage everyone to have hope that things will be better. We all all strong as human beings and we were born to have the strength to fight the adversities that are brought upon in during our life time.

I am nervous to start on meds because my husband and I were planning to start a family this year.

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Welcome Jessica. What a total pain having VM when you are planning to start a family! :(.

Did you ever have visual auras when you had VM. What were your triggers

I was never diagnosed with VM, but instead “MAV” (whatever the distinction is!)

Therefore I don’t think it was migraine-“lead” - migraine for me was an outcome, a symptom of an ear issue that’s never been identified for certain - my left ear.

That all said, plenty of neurological issues over the years that have all but gone now. The worst hallucinations were swinging vision and slanted floors. I still get scintillating scotoma from time to time but it’s just annoying not painful and very irregularly. Those definitely have triggers and it’s often in mixed artificial and natural light - e.g. in a typical ‘artisan’ cafe that has vintage light bulbs! :rofl:

I love hearing success stories. Do you still have to avoid your triggers without meds or are you pretty back to your normal self. Did you every include the migraine diet as one of your methods.

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I mostly just limited caffeine and alcohol.

My journal is linked on my User Card as my featured Topic (accessible by clicking my avatar) and I wrote a #success-stories-positivity. Those have all the details.

I started off with classic migraines with aura from my teens, sporadically until 2020 when I got diagnosed with underactive thyroid. During the last 2.5 years I’ve had more migraines than the previous 50. Mine are boringly familiar, visual disturbance, shimmering lights, zig zag patterning to the point when I cant really see properly.

This can last upto half an hour then once that goes I’ll start getting the head pain. Sometimes I’ve had aura but no headache develops which is weird. No idea of specific triggers, bad sleep can be one. I’ve given up caffeine, dont drink alcohol anyway, very rarely eat chocolate or Chinese food. I do love cheddar but am trying to avoid cheese, which is hard. But I’m not convinced my migraines are food related.

Hello! Wow so sorry you’re dealing with this but my number 1 piece of advice for you would to be to get your VM under control before you get pregnant. Hormones can have a huge impact on VM which could go either way (for better or worse) not to sound like a downer but having a baby is hard enough as is and throw VM on top of that and it can be very challenging. I know I don’t personally know you so you may handle attacks way better than I do! I kinda freak out every time even though I’ve had them for years. Just want to wish you luck and fingers crossed you figure out a treatment so you can start a family!

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Hello everyone,

I thought I’d give everyone an update. I have been on propranolol for about a month and it has really helped me In getting my vertigo under control. Or that’s what I think anyways. I have been doing lots of other things such as running daily, yoga, continuing to work at my very physical strenuous job (I’m a therapist who pulls, transfers, bends over, carry, catch falling patients in the hospital). I am also continuing to consume my daily supplements such as coq10, magnesium, vitamin d, and vitamin c. Because I feel like I have actively changed so much of my life style (including diet) I am not sure what happened to helped me particularly.

I would say that I have gotten most of my life back other than the nagging migraine (2/10 pain) I have 24/7, mild vertigo (which still allows me to work), and huge debilitating migraine attacks I get once a week on average (mostly food triggers I think, trying to figure that out) which I found I can easily now abort with Tylenol, and varying degrees of beating tinnitus (seems to beat according to me hear beat) depending on the day.

What seems to be a little weird is that my VM is mutated more to a headache/migraine without vertigo recently. When I first had my vertigo attacks, they were without headaches. Now, My battle is more with migraines rather than my vertigo (which could be a blessing if I think about it). Vertigo is mildly there but not enough to bother me. Some days I feel as if “ can live like this” but these weekly big migraine attacks leave me debilitated for some parts of the day I have it.

I’m am convinced that I am on my way to recovery. I plan to continue my propranolol and figure out my triggers. I am blessed that I was able to go back to work after 2 weeks of my debilitating vertigo symptoms. 1st 2 weeks of returning work was hard but I pushed through. I felt exhausted from compensating my body/balance/movement every day with my vertigo, but felt accomplished coming home after completing a days job.

Good luck everyone. We can all do this!!!

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Great job! Propranolol is great drug (if it works). How much are you taking?

I am taking 80mg/day. I do get light headed if I stand up from lying down position, but recocer quickly. My blood pressure currently runs 100s/60s with HR in 60s.

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