Apologies in advance. I hate boring people with my ongoing problems but I honestly find these blog posts useful. First, they’re a way for me to vent a little. Second, they provide a good record for what’s been happening. Many a time I’ve come back to look at a blog I had written to remember events I’d forgotten.
Monday was awful. My mum was on a drug called betahistine which she really didn’t like. It was meant to control her vertigo and nausea but had some side effects that weren’t so nice, including nightmares. She was moved to cyclizine, a drug which we assumed was far more benign. At first it was. She said the dreams she was having (it’s a sedative, btw) were some of the nicest she’d ever had. Okay, it made her pretty drowsy and left her with a dry mouth but compared to the other tablet, it was much better. Things were under control.
Except after about a week, the effects began to build up. The drowsiness was now more like a zombie state. Yesterday it was obvious she has to come off them so she did. And then the nausea came back.
Ringing a doctor was out of the question, at least for the moment. We had to make a decision so she decided she’d try to ride out the nausea. It meant taking nothing, which made me uneasy but I know that sometimes it’s good to figure out how many of your problems are caused by the medication.
By about 7pm last night, the nausea was raging. We resisted the temptation to take the easy route and give her one of the tablets that had helped her in the short term but with long term effects. She instead went to lie down.
The nausea disappeared inside half an hour.
It was a relief but not in the way it might sound.
Sure, I was glad her nausea had gone but I think it helps diagnose her problem.
Here’s the strange thing I’ve learned recently about vertigo. Most people get it when lying down. It’s the inner ear mechanism, something to do with water or pressure or whatever the hell it is. Changes in head position bring it on but especially lying down.
An ENT consultant the other week had said he didn’t think it was her ear since – interesting point coming up – if you have vertigo that moves vertically (looking at a clock on a wall, she says it either moves up, moves down, or moves up and down) it’s very likely not caused by the ear.
For weeks I’ve suspected the problem was caused by neck arthritis (other key symptoms suggested it) but you begin to second guess yourself. Now I feel like it makes more sense. She almost never suffers nausea overnight and now it seems that taking weight of her neck takes away the symptoms. If hopefully means we can manage it for a few days until we get to see a neck specialist, which I’ve arranged for Saturday.
[Insert rant her about how the GP had ignored this problem for too long and then only wanted to mask it with drugs but… really… what’s the point?]
