Thanksgiving, rest and Meniere’s disease

As I have written in the past rest or lack of it can certainly bring on a meniere’s attack. Not in every case but lack of rest also translates into stress which really ups the chances of spinning and throwing up. The holidays should be a great time to relax and not to worry about other things that are going on unfortunately that isn’t always the case. For some reason thanksgiving and Christmas seem to be stressful when it really shouldn’t be.

One thing that I am careful about especially at thanksgiving is going into crowded stores. While the deals are great, the packed stores and the long aisles at times plays tricks on me causing me to be a little light headed and possible heading for an attack. Luckily my wife does the Christmas shopping for our son so I don’t venture out on the dreaded Black Friday.

I hope everyone had a good thanksgiving and they didn’t overdo it on the salt. We just had turkey and few side items like mashed potatoes and cornbread.  And probably the best part was that we stayed at home which meant no long drives for me (one less thing to trigger an attack!).

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My latest bout with tinnitus

Tinnitus is often a subject of comments on my Meniere’s disease blog and that makes sense because tinnitus and Meniere’s disease often occur together. Some folks have the ringing sound in their ears all the time while others may have it once and a while. In my own situation I occasionally had the type of tinnitus that was either ringing or more of a static sound. Unfortunately this past week I have experienced a different and more annoying type of noise in my ear.

From what I can remember it started about a week ago when I heard what sounded like music coming from outside. It wasn’t anything I could identify it was more like booming noise like the bass was too high. I walked outside and I could still hear it but it wasn’t coming from any of my neighbors’ houses. I then asked my wife and son if they were hearing the same thing that I was.  They both told me that they didn’t hear anything and then it dawned on me that this was some type of tinnitus.

Why now?

One possible reason could be that I have been dealing with some congestion and stuffiness in my nose. And this usually has some effect on my ears where I begin to have a bit of an ear ache. But I get this type of congestion a lot and it has never affected me with this type of tinnitus.

I have also been taking a lot of ibuprofen lately for headaches but once again that is something that I have been doing for a while.

It was interesting this week as I was trying to figure out what was going on someone wrote a comment about a type of tinnitus call pulsatile where the sound matches up with your heartbeat. That is interesting because I hadn’t heard about that before and I started to wonder if that is what I have now. I’m not sure but I will continue to research on it.

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A musician with Meniere’s disease

Meniere’s doesn’t get a lot of publicity probably because of the rarity of the disease and the fact that there isn’t any cure for it. Another reason might be that there aren’t many celebrities that have it. You wouldn’t think that would matter much but it does.  There are some celebrities that are dealing with it, the singer and actress Kristin Chenoweth has talked about her bouts with meniere’s on talk shows and that is certainly good. I also know of the singer Ryan Adams that has Meniere’s disease.

Ryan Adams had quite a time with it a few years ago, in an interview with quietus magazine he spoke about how he almost gave up his music because of it. This spurred him on to change things in his life

“I dealt with it in a lot of extreme ways. You change your diet, you exercise, take supplements, acupuncture, acupressure, hypnotherapy, you do what you can”

I am glad to see that changes in his life have helped him to deal with this disorder. I hope that things continue to be that way although we all know that meniere’s has a way of resurfacing just when you think that you are over it.

I’m glad that he is talking about Meniere’s disease hopefully that will help get the word out about this horrible disorder.

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Ambien and Meniere’s disease

I had a checkup with a new ENT the other day. Actually I had seen him before about 3 years ago so I was considered a new patient. One of things that we talked about was my problems with getting enough rest. As I have mentioned before I also have sleep apnea which makes getting any rest nearly impossible. Another doctor had written a prescription of Ambien for me and I had been taking it for a couple of months. I told the ENT that I didn’t think that it was helping that much. He didn’t think that it would in fact he thought that it would make my sleep apnea even worse. It also seems to have made my meniere’s worse also.

I stopped taking the Ambien after I saw the ENT. That night I couldn’t get to sleep till about 3 in the morning. When I got up I felt that familiar feeling of an eminent attack. Luckily it didn’t happen although I have felt lightheaded since I stopped taking the sleeping pills. Hopefully this will go away in time because Meniere’s disease and being tired isn’t a good combination.

By the way I also took a hearing test at the doctor’s office and the results were pretty much what I expected. The hearing in my right ear is very bad (meniere’s ear) and the hearing in the other is okay. The ENT did say that I was a candidate for a hearing aid; unfortunately my health insurance doesn’t cover hearing aids.

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