In the midst of being diagnosed

I had my appointment today! I made it. It was rough getting there, but I made it!

First I will say, I really liked the medical provider which I think is huge. I saw the physician’s assistant of the neurologist that was recommended to me. My appointment with the neurologist is in a few weeks but they offered to have me seen sooner by her PA to get a start on treatment. She said they work very closely together. I still have my appointment with the neurologist, but she’s just going to check to see how I’m getting along on the medication that was prescribed and answer any other questions.
But, she was awesome and so compassionate. That alone, took a huge weight off my shoulders. Then she told me that they treat a lot of patients with vestibular migraines, and I felt myself relax even more.

Full disclosure: I have medication anxiety (surprise!) as I’ve found a lot of people with vestibular migraines do. I knew after doing my own reading and before going to the appointment that there was one medication I would not be willing to try: Effexor.
I’ve read the horror stories of coming off of it and it genuinely terrifies me. My thought process was, that was reasonable of me. One med out of all the meds used to treat vestibular migraine? I felt like that was still being pretty open to treatments.
Unfortunately, it was one of two medications she said they use first and work best to treat vestibular migraines. The other one is propanolol, but with my low blood pressure (90s/60s) and low heart rate, she said “no way”. I told her that I wouldn’t totally shut it out, but I would rather keep Effexor as a last resort if other meds cannot get me a significant amount of my life back. She agreed and said that if I went on it feeling that strongly about it, that it probably wouldn’t work for me anyways. She knew I tried amtriptyline and had to stop it for tachycardia. She said we could try nortriptyline but it’s likely to have the same side effect on me so we’d just be wasting time.

Her next option for me was Topiramate 50 mg once a day in the evening, and that’s what we settled on. She said to start with 25 mg for the first week and take my first one when my husband is going to be home the next day, just in case. She was aware of my medication anxiety

Honestly, I could find a million reasons and side effects not to try any medication, but my quality of life has become so greatly affected by this, that I need to take a leap of faith. She said if that doesn’t work, there are other options besides Effexor.

She was so knowledgeable and advised not to start any vestibular therapy until we get me feeling better. She answered all my questions thoroughly and that alone made me feel better and eased my anxiety.

She also prescribed me Compazine since the Zofran is only helping very slightly. She said if it doesn’t work we can go back to Zofran and try increasing the dose.

*I forgot to mention that at this point she feels the nausea is vestibular related. She said my system is just so hyper right now and it cannot calm down.

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