Effexor

The only theory that anyone’s come up with for my vertigo issues that holds any weight is that they’re possibly vestibular migraines, so my neurologist put me on Effexor, which can help treat vestibular migraines.

It can also treat anxiety, fibromyalgia, and ADHD (which makes sense, as they’re all fundamentally dopamine dysregulation problems, and Effexor works primarily by regulating dopamine), so maybe this will be the magic bullet that helps me with everything. Several of my friends turn out to be taking it for their fibromyalgia and/or anxiety and they say it helps them somewhat, so, we’ll see.

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Vertigo and meclizine

So, I was on meclizine for a couple days, and it is definitely not the right med for me.

Basically, it made me super tired and pretty much constantly sleepy or on the edge of falling asleep (like, to the extent that I was experiencing hypnagogia), and it wasn’t helping my vertigo at all.

What’s more, for vertigo it’s meant to be used as a rescue med and not a maintenance med, getting tolerant to it can cause some major problems, and it has a bad interaction with my rescue inhaler. I’m not even sure how it would be useful as a rescue med given that my vertigo attacks usually last 10-15 seconds and are brought on at random, and it takes about an hour to kick in.

Right now my best hope seems to be the vestibular rehabilitation physical therapy I’ve been prescribed. My intake appointment for that is in about two weeks. I also have a neurologist appointment next week, which will hopefully provide some amount of clarity.

Forward progress

My pain flareup is finally subsiding today, and also I had a followup appointment with my ENT and another CT scan on my sinuses, which found that I do not currently have sinus polyps, although I do have a mild deviated septum. The ENT thinks it’s not necessary to get surgery and that I can just continue to manage the occasional sinus infections as they come up, and that my usual ongoing management strategies are the way to go (which I assume means saline rinses and Sudafed, although we didn’t actually discuss those at all).

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Vertigo progress

Today I finally had an appointment with an ENT and an audiologist, as part of trying to figure out what’s going on with my vertigo.

The audiologist didn’t find anything wrong with my hearing and said it’s normal for someone of my age. (She also told me the correct pronunciation of “tinnitus.” It’s like TIN-nit-iss.) She didn’t have any idea what might be underlying my tinnitus but I’ve had it my whole life and it doesn’t seem to be relevant to anything going on now.

The ENT didn’t see anything particularly out of the ordinary with my sinuses from what he could see in this basic exam, but he wanted to bring me in for a more focused CT scan, especially since my previous cranial CT scan found sinus polyps as being a thing, and I have such a long history of chronic sinus issues. So that’ll happen in a month. In the meantime he also referred me to a physical therapist that can do vestibular rehabitation, and he thinks the prognosis for that is really good.

Hopefully I’ll be able to feel comfortable driving again soon, because gosh do I not like being stuck in my little bubble.

Tinnitus update

For several days my tinnitus and vertigo were getting progressively worse, which made me once again worry that I am developing Ménière’s disease, which has a prognosis that is very much Not Good.

And I mentioned this on a friend’s Discord’s venting channel, and someone else replied:

I had a family member diagnosed with Ménière’s and it turned out to actually be TMJ dysfunction from teeth grinding.

It was causing Eustachian tube swelling and thus the vertigo

This was actually super informative, because I’ve always had TMJ issues and pretty bad bruxism!

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Update-dumping

It’s been a little while again! I think I like these collected updates rather than doing daily micro-dumps, and it’s also nice posting it here instead of on Mastodon or whatever. Timeline-based social media kinda bums me out these days.

But yeah today I’m feeling pretty accomplished!

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