Meniere's Disease Support Group
Meniere's disease is a balance disorder of the inner ear. The symptoms of Meniere's are variable; not all sufferers experience the same symptoms. However, "classic Meniere's" is considered to comprise the following four symptoms: Periodic episodes of rotary vertigo, hearing loss, tinnitus, and a sensation of fullness or pressure in one or both ears.
I have been walking around my house as I clean or do other things with the fear that I will get vertigo and end up smacking my head on the wall, door, washer, counter etc... I had another bout of vertigo the other night and nearly fell right into my husband as we were talking. How do you deal with this and do you drive?
So sorry to hear you are having vertigo. How long has that been going on? Has the doctor given you anything for it? When I start having vertigo my ENT doctor gives me a steroid and it takes about 3 weeks, but then they are gone. I do drive because before it starts I usually get a little weird and dizzy so I have time to get home. But once I start having a period of attacks then I would only drive to work, like 5 minutes away. Once I have a least a couple of weeks without a problem would I start driving longer distances again. What I do when I feel the vertigo coming is go to the bathroom and empty out, then sit in a comfortable chair with a bucket and just wait it out. Moving around can be dangerous!
My dizziness comes on randomly with no warning. I know what my triggers are and can avoid it happening often, but not always. I have woken up in the morning dizzy. The short ones last just seconds; just long enough to make me fall, almost fall, crash into people, and crash into objects/walls/doors. The longer episodes can last for days and requires me to take a lot of meclizine before it slowly goes away.
The longer episodes are what get triggered by something I'm doing or not doing (too much physical activity, not sleeping properly, stress, etc). I'm not sure what causes the sudden and short ones. I'll just be walking and suddenly everything's whirling and I'm going down. I've been lucky enough not to have any serious accidents except one many years ago before I was diagnosed, so I don't fear every day activities. But I'm scared to death of driving and having one of those episodes.
I was just diagnosed in January so don't have much experience with MD, but last year was horrible. I would get vertigo for 12-15 hours. All I could do was lay on the floor. It usually hit me on the weekends, so I thought it was related to stress from the work week (which probably was a trigger). Once I got the diagnosis and was told to go on low sodium diet, that seemed to control the vertigo. Are you eating a low sodium diet? I'm down to about 500 mg/day; try not to get over 1,000. That might be too low, but I haven't had an attack since the beginning of January so I really think that was the ticket for me. I still haven't figured out my triggers for the ringing and ear pressure, though. Keeping a good record in my journal, though! Hang in there!
I feel like I know the fear you are talking about. I had 2 incidents where I was feeling just fine and was driving and then out of nowhere I had a horrible vertigo attack. I was lucky that both times I was less than 2 miles from home. After those incidents I started restricting how much I drove. Any big outing I started letting my husband drive. I am fortunate that most of my kids activties are very close to home. Besides for driving I think the biggest fear was my husband. He had to go out of town and he was always worried I would fall or have a bad attack while he was gone. I took a drastic step to get rid of vertigo and although I still can't drive I'm doing better than I was before the surgery. I hope you are having a good weekend!