I’ve had my three month appointment at the ENT department. This time I saw a different doctor. He read my notes as I sat there opposite him, quickly trying to bring himself up to speed on my vertigo history. In a way I felt sorry for him; it must be like this with every patient. Possibly never treated them before, having to rely on notes typed up by another doctor and come to a judgment while talking to the patient. It’s a high-pressure job.
We agreed that I could come off the motion sickness medication, as I am feeling 80-85% recovered now and the nausea is pretty much gone. I’ve been making good progress with the actual vertigo and dizziness too. I can now walk around fairly easily and I can cope with shops for a while. Now and then I have the feeling of jerky movements happening (like I’m on a bucking bronco machine) or what I call feeling ‘jangled’ (almost like my head is a big bell and someone has rung it and it won’t stop ringing – the motion, not noise) but I take it easy, lie down, perhaps have a snooze, and eventually it recedes.
I’m still taking the migraine prophylactic, as that is a longer-term type of medication. We can’t know for sure whether the medication is the reason for my recovery so far, or if it’s because of the movement exercises I do, or if it’s down to both of them, or if it’s nothing to do with either of them and I was just going to get better anyway (‘regression to the mean’).
It leaves me somewhat unsatisfied, obviously, because if you don’t know exactly what caused something to happen or exactly what caused it to lessen, then you are not in a very confident position for dealing with avoiding it or getting rid of it if it happens again.
The car journey to the hospital was nowhere near the absolutely terrifying ordeal of the first and second trips in September. I also had no need for a wheelchair to get around the hospital (or, more correctly, for other people to wheel me around the hospital in a petrified state). Walking into the hospital, it was a very different experience from being in a wheelchair. I could still see how grimy, rundown and dated the place was, but it didn’t make me feel as desperate as it had when I was in a wheelchair. People didn’t feel free to stare at me or look pityingly. They might have thought my hair was strange, but they wouldn’t keep their eyes on me. A person in a wheelchair is not someone to be gawped at, as though they don’t have the same thoughts and feelings as walking human beings.
I have my first physio appointment next week. It may well be of not much help now I have recovered so much on my own. But then again maybe it will help me to recover that extra bit more.
