Health Happenings

Bonjour readers :) 

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to do a post on the health scare that I had last semester. Last year I started feeling a little bit "off." I've always had problems with hypoglycemia so I figured that my issues stemmed around that. I felt very light headed, a little dizzy, and exhausted all the time. When I went home in December I saw a doctor and she informed me that everything appeared to be fine. I assumed that maybe my feelings were just in my head and I didn't have a real problem. Once I returned to school I still felt a little bit off but chalked it up to stress. In February things started to go downhill very fast. I because dizzy and light headed all of the time. I was incredibly exhausted and felt absolutely awful. I would get up to go to class and barely make it. At times I would get as far as the class room and I would have to leave because my dizziness was so out of control. Soon after the dizziness started I began having intense nausea, like throwing up multiple times a day intense. I thought that I might have problems with my thyroid which caused my hypoglycemia to worsen. I went to the doctor and got another full blood work up but she diagnosed me with BPPV benign paroxysmal positional vertigo and treated me with scopolamine patches. BPPV lasts anywhere from a couple of weeks to 6 months. Unfortunately the side effects from the scopolamine where almost worse than the symptoms of what I thought was BPPV. Scopolamine causes blurred vision, fatigue, hallucinations, and mild dizziness. All of these were still better than nausea and throwing up all of the time. I don't know if you've ever experienced terrible constant nausea but it is debilitating. In addition the adhesive from the scopolamine took all of the skin off behind my ears and left me with large raw pus filled sores (gross, I know!). 

While going through all of this my school work suffered, my work suffered, and I wasn't able to drive or exercise or live any kind of a normal life,  it sucked. I went to go see another doctor for a second opinion and I learned that the diagnosis of BPPV was far from correct. Unfortunately this meant that we still didn't know what it was. Throughout this whole thing my parents were continually reminding me to "get out of denial" because I was actually pregnant. While this was funny at first it got really old really fast so I decided to just tell them everything was fine and deal with all of the doctor visits and tests on my own. That definitely wasn't easy. Due to my age and symptoms my doctor put the fear in my mind that it could be MS. Let me tell you, there is nothing like waiting for a neurologist appointment like thinking you have MS. 

I went and saw a neurotologist first because a really good friend was able to get me in immediately. The neurotologist set me up with an MRI and scheduled me for a lot of tests. Eventually we found out that I have a problem with one of my cranial nerves and suffer from vestibular migraines. He "prescribed" daily exercise to help me compensate for my busted nerve. The good thing was I was able to get off of the patches, the bad thing was that I still had all of the terrible side effects! It's funny how a diagnosis doesn't all the sudden make you 100% better ;) Anyways I was exercising and still not feeling totally better so I went and saw another neurologist for a second opinion. He prescribed me with a migraine medication that turns out had psychological side effects that I could just not handle so I'm back to where I started :) Right now I'm trying to handle everything in a natural way through exercise and diet. I still get the migraines but not as frequently by which I mean not daily. I am able to live close to what was my normal life :) I'm still trying to find a medication that is the right fit for me so that I will be able to go to class everyday and my school performance won't suffer again. 

Sorry for what is probably the longest post I've ever written but it's a story that deserves to be told especially on a lifestyle blog :) Thank you all for reading! My goal this year is to try to handle this "situation" in the most natural way possible. Although I must say that my number one priority is to have a good academic year because my last semester was so horrible. I know that I can do it and that these migraines and my bum cranial nerve ;) will not get the best of me! 

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