Bad Attack

After yesterdays negative post (and today's not so positive one) I want to state that I really don't like being so negative on the blog. I wanted this blog to be a positive experience, a place for Meniere's sufferers to go and fell like they belong and aren't isolated because of their condition. But let's face it, Meniere's Disease is anything but positive. It can be hell at its very worst. And here's why...

A bad attack is always lurking around the corner. You never know when it's going to show its ugly face. And when its there, beating you down you never know when it will go away. It could take several minutes, hours, or even days.

As you know from yesterdays post, I started my day with a horrible 2AM wake up call. A vertigo attack woke me up from a deep sleep to let me know my world was spinning. Luckily, it didn't last long and I was able to go back to sleep...once I changed rooms away from the dogs and hubby. (Sharing a bed during a vertigo attack is not a good idea...any slight movement can set you off into a deeper attack.) So, once I was camped out on the sofa I was able to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of my Meniere's episodes for the day.

After my disturbing middle of the night wake up call, I woke up on my own at a reasonable time later that morning. I was actually feeling pretty good, especially considering I had just had a vertigo attack only a few hours earlier. So I went about my day with my morning yoga, breakfast, checking emails, etc. I was doing pretty good. I decided it would be a good day for me work in my art studio....it's the one place I can go that I feel happy and can forget about my Meniere's for a little bit. Except this time. I soon realized that I was having small dizzy episodes. While I was looking at the canvas, getting ready to paint my next stroke everything started to spin. It only lasted a couple minutes so I tried to ignore it and work through it (which is never a good idea). It wasn't long before I knew that I needed to go lie down and rest. So that's what I did. I ended up taking it easy the rest of the day, trying to prevent anymore attacks. For the most part it was a good afternoon as long as I stayed put. Later that evening I found myself having an extremely bad headache. It came up very quickly and felt horrible. The pressure and pain was so unbearable that I decided I needed to take something for it. I'm not one who usually takes medication for any reason if I can avoid it, but this was one of those times I felt it was necessary. So I got up to figure out what drug I was going to take when it hit me, a bad vertigo attack. All of the sudden the entire room was spinning. I immediately had to lie back down and curl up in the fetal position, closing my eyes and holding my head for dear life. It didn't take long for the nausea to begin and I knew I was going to be sick. I crawled to the nearest trashcan which felt like miles way but really was less than 10 feet. I made it there just in time to throw up several times. I eventually made it back to the sofa where I laid there, hugging the trashcan and praying for my world to stop spinning. Like I said before, I don't like to take meds unless I absolutely have to and at this point I knew I had to take something to get the vertigo under control. My rescue meds were already sitting out on the table next to the sofa but I was so dizzy that I couldn't tell for sure which one I needed to take. I kept looking at the different bottles and baggies of pills trying to read the labels. Not getting anywhere, I decided on one and swallowed it with a gulp of water as quickly as I could so that I could lie back down. It didn't take long before I was throwing it back up. I waited for my stomach to settle down a bit and took another one, only to throw it up as well. I began to panic. How was the spinning ever going to stop if I couldn't keep the meds down?! As I was vomiting I began to cry. I was scared and I was alone. All I wanted to do was call someone to help me but I couldn't see the phone long enough to dial the correct numbers and then of course how would I be able to hear the person I called? I desperately wanted to call 911 hoping they could rescue me, give me a shot or something to make it all go away. Even if they could do this I knew it wasn't a good idea considering I didn't have health insurance anymore since I lost my job. So there I was, a slobbery, tear-filled, pukey, dizzy mess. All I could do was wait. So I waited. And waited. And waited. After about 2 hours of this nightmare I finally fell asleep.

Eventually Jeff came home from work to find me in this mess. Luckily by then my dizziness had stopped but that was not the end of my nightmare. My head was still in massive amounts of pain. It was so bad I couldn't even hold my head up. Jeff, aka my hero, helped me get cleaned up, made me a bland dinner to appease my stomach and gave me a migraine pill. Eventually the pain deteriorated enough that I was able to go back to sleep and rest through the night.

This morning I woke up felling better, but feeling like I had been run over by a truck....a really big truck. I feel quite achy, probably from being tense during the vertigo attack, and I'm still very tired even though I slept almost 12 hours straight. But I'm not dizzy. Not right now at least. I don't know when my next attack will happen. It could be weeks, days or even just minutes away. All I can do is try to enjoy every minute I have that is dizzy free, and pray that today is better than yesterday.

Much Love,
Shanon