I've been ruminating, fuming, mulling and analyzing yesterday's conversation with the goddess of vestibular problems all night. When I opened my eyes this morning, the whole thing started up again in my head right away. I just went to attempt to exercise, and thought about it the whole — brief– time. Guess what? Too dizzy to exercise today. Might be that I'm not quite done with the flu, but after walking a few laps and doing the leg press and the lat pulls, I started to feel so weird and light-headed that I worried I was a falling risk. I packed it in after 20 minutes and came home. Depressing and frustrating! And what this means is that to this very moment my vestibular problems are still throwing a wrench into my life. "A Spaniard in the works!" as my mother used to say.
Okay, so let's review the timeline:
I was sick all spring, with every type of upper respiratory ailment in the book, including a raging ear infection in my left ear that reduced me to tears and apparently ruptured May 1. (Circumstantial evidence… the pain was unbearable. Then, just as I was about to drag my children out into a dark and rainy night so that I could go to urgent care for it, it got better. The pain went away and the drainage began. An open and shut case??? I don't know, but there's the evidence. This could be irrelevant, in any case, because Vince said that sometimes people who have a viral inner-ear attack that leaves nerve damage actually feel nothing and have no awareness of having been sick at all.) Then, a month later I was down for the count with a horrible acute sinus infection. I got a CT-scan to prove that one, as well as a chest x-ray to rule out walking pneumonia. (I'm telling you, i was totally sick!) The dr. heard something in my lungs at that time, and gave me an antibiotic strong enough to kill both the sinus infection and any pneumonia that may have been in there too, although none was on the x-ray.
Okay. Now, on day 9 of the antibiotics, which was June 10, I totally lost hearing in my left ear– the same one that had the horrible ear infection six weeks before. My ear also began to ring loudly and to feel like it had been on airplane when the rest of me hadn't. This brought with it some dizziness from time to time over the next 24 hours, culminating in the really horrible, full-blown vertigo attack I had on 6/11, while driving home from the last day of school picnic.
Now, you honestly can't tell me that that attack was not EAR related. You can't. I won't believe it. My EAR was a major part of it– I had a whole set of tangible ear symptoms. My hearing was tested the next day, in fact, and it was obvious that my left ear was not working well, either for balance or hearing. You can see it plainly on the test, even I as a lay person could see the difference.
So… now I'm being asked to believe that I had a major ear-related episode, and then, completely out of the blue, at the exact same moment, some other part of my vestibular system went spontaneously haywire, like my spine or my nervous system, or my heart and my blood pressure, and now THAT has caused nearly six months of totally unrelated, different, un-ear-related dizziness and balance issues. Because my ears are "fine" my ears are "normal."
I find this VERY hard to believe. In fact, impossible. It's just as bad as the first wrong diagnosis I got, that after all this ear and head stuff going on for months I had come down with a totally unrelated and spontaneous case of Meniere's Disease!
And why, looking at the same data she had on August 9th, did the vestibular goddess walk in to the office that day and say, and I quote, "Something bad happened to your left ear. I can't say what, or why, but I can measure the damage." Now she denies everything and washes her hands of me.
I think the answer here is really quite simple. The Emperess has no clothes. She simply didn't do her job well yesterday. (She did mention that her neck was hurting, perhaps that explains it.) She didn't give me good care. She didn't review my file. She doesn't remember what she told me before and I've fallen through the cracks. That's the only explanation that holds water. So, why am I surprised?? Our health care system is in a shambles and this is part of it. And, surely, the cost to see her yesterday was likely $300 or something like that, but luckily, having paid through $4,000 out of pocket for my health care this year, (not inlcuding all the boys' separate health care costs, prescription drugs and tons and tons of co-pays) I should not have to pay that myself. Still, someone does, and that's stupid too.
Question: is there any point in calling and demanding a further explanation? Is there any point at all? Her assistant was already pretty snippy with me about my MRI when I called back for more information, and there's no way I'll get to talk to the oracle herself. I'll just get the guard dog, who will treat me again like a special needs child, or a problem child, and surely write in my chart that I'm Trouble, capital T, and I'll be black-balled. (Perhaps this already happened…?) And since this story clearly is far from over, maybe I shouldn't. And what will it accomplish? She's never going to admit she's wrong.
Oh, also, good news about the tilt-table test I get to do with the cardiologist on Christmas Eve day– I read this yesterday online, "The test is over when the patient faints." Sounds great right??? Something to look forward to.