Plaidophile

So, when all is said and done, a fairly likely diagnosis for what's been going on with me is that I have labyrinthitis (an inflammation of the inner ear, usually due to viral infection). It certainly fits the symptoms, at least — bouts of dizziness which turn into anxiety attacks, occasional tinnitus (more than baseline for me, anyway), and so on. My working theory right now is that the stress of Chris' death made it easy for me to get very dehydrated and therefore rather constipated, which turned into an impacted bowel, and somewhere along the line I also got labyrinthitis (I don't recall exactly when the dizziness or anxiety attacks started but they were I think around the time that I passed out on the 2nd). The stool softeners I've been on for the impacted bowel (and the discontinuation of spironolactone) have helped immensely on the bowel (I'm pooping normally and regularly again, yay!) and the remaining symptoms are all just explained by labyrinthitis and a re-emergence of Raynaud's syndrome, which I've had in the past but haven't had trouble with for a while. And of course, anxiety is a pretty major Raynaud's trigger, which explains how one thing can lead to another (and the progression of an attack really does strongly imply that it's labyrinthitis → anxiety attack → Raynaud's attack).

I don't know the underlying cause of the Raynaud's but I know my mom has it chronically and so there might just be a genetic component, and I just need to learn to relax when I'm having an attack. For a while I had been just meditating (usually while lying down) although I'm not always in a situation where I can do that, and the times that it's gotten out of control have been when I've been in a situation where I just plain couldn't take a break, or just when I was getting better some concerned friend would come over and make sure I was doing okay which would of course just make everything come right back (such as during Chris' funeral, where I'd go lie down in the car and things would be getting fine and then someone would knock on the window, bringing everything right back; of course, Chris's funeral had plenty of NON-dizzy anxiety as well).

Anyway, hopefully if that was the case then I can go back to normal life and be more confident that I'm not going to just die unexpectedly or something, and that in and of itself should help to keep things from getting bad to begin with.

My understanding is that viral labyrinthitis usually takes a few weeks to a few months to clear up on its own, and my bloodwork doesn't support it being bacterial labyrinthitis. My doctor seems to think the labyrinthitis theory is plausible (per a brief email conversation) so I guess I'll just stick with that for now, until something else happens to make me think otherwise.