I thought about posting a note in “Success stories,” but as soon as the thought crossed my mind, I heard my grandmother’s voice in the back of my mind saying, “Don’t brag.” The surest way to ensure disaster, according to her, was to say that something was going well. The gods don’t like displays of hubris.
The Kid’s MAV started the last week of September last year. It’s now the last week of March. Six months, almost exactly.
And things are going extremely well. The chronic dizziness is gone. The headaches (which were only ever mild anyway) are gone. He doesn’t wake up during the night because the room is spinning. He can walk through the crowded hallways at school without using a cane for balance. He can walk around the house without keeping a hand on the wall or a piece of furniture.
He’s taking 60mg slow-release propranolol daily at bedtime. He saw his neurologist on Wednesday. She said the right-sided weakness that came in with his migraine is gone. Since he’s not dizzy, she said if he wanted to do a trial without meds, she’d recommend trying it during the summer. He asked if he had to. He does NOT want to give up the meds. She said they’re quite safe, and if he wants to stay on them for years, he can. She wants him to continue managing his sleep schedule (no staying up late on the weekends), eat a healthy diet, avoid aspartame or anything else that he identifies as a trigger, keep stress at a reasonable level, and do fun things with his friends as often as possible. He rather likes the idea of having a medical prescription for socializing. His neurologist is quite certain that being happy and sociable is good medicine for MAV.
He had his last appointment with the physical therapist he was doing VRT with on Thursday. She said he’s still got an odd gait, but he’s always had an odd gait – that’s part of the neurological glitches he had before he developed MAV. She wants him to continue doing exercises to strengthen his ankles and his hip stabilizers. And she’d like him to do casual, recreational sports on a regular basis – preferably baseball or frisbee, where he’d be tracking small moving objects while he’s moving. But he doesn’t need to see her any more.
So the medical advice right now is, get out there and be a kid. Some lifestyle management – but pretty minimal. Once you have migraine, you always have migraine. But right now, things are good.
Mamabear