Hey Scott,
Wow…you’ve really been thru a alot lately with the new job but so glad to hear your beginning to do better. Starting a new job is a Challenge without MAV but having MAV is like a double or Triple Challenge. You appear to be able to not show your symptoms under challenging times…i’m not so lucky. If it gets really bad for me…people start asking me if i’m ok. The lack of concentration under lots of stress shows in my face.
Keep getting better Scott…
Joe
Wow, what an ordeal! Sorry to have been a bit out of the loop keeping up on your new job experiences, but glad to be seeing it now. And that you are feeling better. It made me laugh about your 2003 monitor, and how safe it is and how others are puzzled when they have the latest. I have to stay behind the technology and buy used older stuff that has already gone through it’s outgassing, be it computer components, televisions, stereo components, whatever, otherwise it will make me sick. We had no choice but to buy a new printer, so Earl had to hook it up using a hole in the wall to set it up in the garage until it finishes outgassing, will take a couple of months for sure. Same was true with a new modem. Crazy what we have to go through to function.
Wishing you continued success! 
I know I’m jumping in on this late, but did you ever identify which specific screens ramp up your vertigo? I think I have the same issue with the newer macs. It also sounds like the major anxiety that switching jobs can cause played a part in how you were feeling… that will just get easier as the days pass!
It’s 4 weeks now into this job and I’ve gradually been sinking lower and lower into MAV hell. I finally swapped work stations on Wednesday thinking all would be wonderful but instead everything has gotten worse. Instant dizziness when I moved. I think it was triggered by glare which I fixed using a window blind coupled with a massage the previous night and a viral thing. But still the headaches and or dizziness has persisted and as I type now I haven’t left my bed all day (Saturday here). It’s all too hard. Typing this now sets of massive visual vertigo, sleep is totally shot to pieces and I wake every morning feeling doom and gloom.
Either I throw in the towel on this job or I do something on the meds front. Periactin just left me with non-stop awful headaches and feeling off my face all day at work on top of everything else. I’m now considering a move back to Cipramil even though I hate the stuff – neck pain here I come – but it wipes out vertigo. I wonder if I can add 5 mg on top of the Paxil?
Seeing Granot again in another week for some sort of plan to salvage this. While I don’t know if I’m cut out for this new job (9-5 corporate climate) I can’t begin to judge it while feeling like this. :shock:
S
Hi Scott,
Really sorry to hear your desk move hasn’t helped you at all. Personally I find any changes of screen (computers, and phones even) make me feel motion sick/funny for a few days, but it usually settles right down again within a couple of weeks, but obviously this has been going on for four weeks for you now. I think it’s hard to give up on a job, but you do need to think about whether you can brave it out and things will get better (which I hope would happen once you get used to the new environment and the perfume monsters) or whether it’s better for you to cut your losses and look for a new job instead? It’s not very helpful (sorry) but only you know how long you can keep going with something before giving up and moving on. But on the positive side you did seem to feel a bit better for a few days at one point, so hopefully this backwards slide is just a blip?
I think seeing Granot and getting some medication advice might be the way to go. It was such a shame you couldn’t tolerate the pizotifen, as this really helps me immensely, and at a small dose too. How low a dose did you start with? (sorry you probably said at the time, but I can’t remember) I just know some people manage things ok, if they start with something really low and build up gradually. But I expect you tried that anyway. My 13-y.o. daughter takes pizotifen for hemiplegic migraines (yeah, we’re the migraine family from hell 
) and it’s prevented any more attacks so far. She is tiny (7st) but manages twice as much as I take, with no side effects at all.
Facing a potentially similiar(ish) situation myself, as my PhD comes to an end and I’m looking for funding to continue my work. MAV-wise I would like to stay in my current department (a vet school) as the working environment is pretty good for a migraineur (lots of natural lighting, big offices, large uncluttered labs) but I’m not a vet, so teaching and other career development opportunities are quite limited for me there. There’s another department where I did my undergrad degree, where I might be able to work, but that’s an older building, with horrible fluorescent lighting/cramped working conditions. But it would be perfect for me otherwise, as I could get right into lecturing etc, as it’s all in my specialist areas. Hm, decisions, decisions. Still, the way funding is at the mo, I may not get any at all and will be complaining about having no job at all…
Hoping this job can work out for you.
Hi All,
I can now sit here at work and finally say “I’m OK”. It’s taken me 8 weeks of sh*t to get it right but FINALLY there is no visual vertigo (VV) going on at my computers and I don’t feel like I’ve been run over by the hell express when I wake every morning. I’m still migraining but it’s of the sort I can cope with now – pretty much at the baseline I had back at the University.
Interestingly, it was my three days on Periactin that finally stopped the VV. It seems like it interrupted whatever was in swing. Granot told me to dump Periactin for a while and reboot when the jacked up feeling was gone. To be honest, right now I don’t feel like rocking the boat. I have a clear head and I’m not dizzy.
To achieve the above took more than Periactin though. I had to remove some significant triggers from my environment. The BIG one was fluorescent lights. Then a stroke of luck as the organisation shaded all of the windows last week to take the glare out of the sun. Still sunny and bright but not torturous. It’s like I’m wearing sunglasses. Second was getting away from the perfumed ladies in this place. And third, I’m much calmer all around because I know what I’m doing now and the triggers aren’t stressing me out either.
Let’s hope I don’t eat my words or I just jinxed myself!
So, the term “fake it till you make it” really does apply when you’re dragging this migraine ball and chain around.
Sorry I haven’t replied to a few PMs. Will get to them today.
Cheers … Scott
Great news Scott - sounds like your poor old brain has finally had time to come to terms with the shit storm thrown at it from your new environment, and that you got thrown a few lifelines with the tinted windows etc.
Fingers crossed!
How is progress now Scott?