If you have Meniere’s disease you know how difficult it is to deal with spinning attacks and the throwing up and the fear of having an attack. Another problem that I have and I know many others do also is to try to explain Meniere’s disease to a younger child.
My son just turned eight years old on Saturday. It is hard to believe because the time as gone by so quickly. Let all parents my wife and I have had our wonderful highs and roughs lows that every parent goes through. The most difficult thing that I have a problem with is seeing how my son reacts to my illness.
I remember the first time that I was taken to the emergency room; my wife couldn’t find anyone to watch my son so she had to bring in the room where I was staying. He looked very scared as he saw me with an IV in my arm; he didn’t know what to think. We tried to explain to him that daddy was okay, just a little sick. I think he understood it, at least I hoped he did.
He has seen me countless times since then at home throwing up and he seems to have gotten used to it but I know that it bothers him. He knows that the illness has limited some of the things that I can do. And as I discussed before he loves to swim and he would love to see me be more active in the pool but I just can’t. That is rough for both of us.
I had a similar situation when I was growing up with my father. He had heart disease and had his first major heart attack while I was in kindergarten. I was scared and confused because my father at that time had to stay in the hospital for 3 months. This was in the early sixties and there wasn’t as much medical advances in the field of heart disease as there is today.
Over the course of the next 12 years my father had 5 heart attacks. In the back of my mind I was always wondering if the current heart attack was going to be the one to do him in. His last one was in 1977; he died at the age of 61.
Hopefully I will be around a lot longer than my father.
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Sunday, September 27, 2009
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4 comments:
David, my son is also 8. I found it impossible to explain what is is like to have Meniere's Disease to those who have never experienced it.
The vertigo attacks I would tell them it was like that spinning sensation before you throw up when you are drunk in bed but for hours on end and without the euphoria prior to it.
The drops attacks I would tell them it was like suddenly being thrust on a jetcoaster.
THe tinnitus.....inpossible.......except I saw a the movie "the pianist" recently and he was temporarily deafened with tinnitus when a bomb explodes next to him............my kids asked "whats that noise?'" I told them that's what it's like for people with tinnitus all the time.
Thanks those are good examples!
My son is 4, my daughter 3. I have Maniere for nearly two years now. I'm in the middle of a nasty period, have had attacks daily for the last three weeks. My daughter is not too much bothered with it, but my son is. The schoolteacher tells us he is worrying about me when he is at school, worried that there is no one to look after me. We've tried to tell him it had nothing to do with him, that it is not his responsibility, but he still worries.
That is what I hate most about this disease, that I cannot even care for my own children.
The feeling of being helpless is terrible and it is hard to come to grips with this disease. good luck I hope that you find some kind of treatment to relieve some of the side effects of meniere's.
keep in touch
David
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