This morning feels at last like the first morning of summer. I guess that's fitting because of the solstice last night (or on Saturday?). But since school ended ten days ago, one would have expected this feeling a little sooner. The whole Meniere's thing delayed it, seeing as I had that vertigo attack about ten minutes after the last day of school picnic. I then spent an entire week completely flat on my back on the couch. What a strange situation that was. If I stood up I felt utterly exhausted, drained, and also dizzy. The desire, the need, to lie back down was overwhelming.
One possible factor in meniere's is what they call adrenal exhaustion, where you are under such stress (physical in my case), so endlessly, that your adrenal glands finally give out. Your whole system gets screwed up (I use the technical terms), and you can end up with Meniere's disease. Maybe a week of solid rest was what I needed. Or maybe the prednisone was making me feel horrible. Or maybe all of the above. Or maybe the drugs have actually worked!!
Whatever the cause or the details, I'm feeling better now. This morning I was driving Isaac to camp and realized I haven't felt dizzy at all so far today. And this coming on the heels of a weekend in which I had to stay up most of Saturday night because Elias was vomiting relentlessly. He started off with an insane tantrum, totally unprecedented, around 5 p.m. on Saturday. Then he woke up a couple hours later, still totally insane. I thought he as just exhausted, overstimulated because his grandpa and grandma were visiting, and very hungry, but in fact he was sick. We were sitting on the couch trying to get ourselves together when he announced: "I go frow up." And he wasn't kidding. Soon he began to spew, and then repeat, repeat, repeat, every half hour, or hour, all night. Horrible!! And laundry… oh geez. That's the task of the day– getting unburied from infinity laundry.
A week from Wednesday I have this unpleasant-sounding balance test to do. And then on July 6th I have a follow up appt with the ENT to discuss those results and all else about this situation. I hope we can shrug and say, "Well, maybe it was a one-time thing." And then I can really go back to normal. The other thing that's good about this whole ordeal is that now I know what to look for. I guess it's common for the ear symptoms to start in advance of the vertigo– in my case this time it was 24 hours in advance. I didn't know what that meant before, but if it happens again I think I'll be able to take evasive maneuvers, I hope, to fend it off. Also, I'm watching the salt (which is a factor), and ordered myself a batch of custom-made vitamins. I got to choose the name of the formula and I called it, "Menieres-B-Gone." All in all my goal is to NEVER EVER go through this again, and, as the Meniere's booklet says, "still lead a normal life despite [my] chronic disease."