Vertigo....

I thought we had had enough excitement for our summer, but last Tuesday I had to call Jeff home from work.  I was not feeling good (at first I thought it was the Mango I was sharing with the kids, just because it was a new thing for us) and lay down for a few minutes.  After 10 minutes of the room spinning I called Jeff at work.  We decided to give it 15 more minutes in which I did not improve.  Jeff graciously took a sick day and came home to rescue me.  Clutching my head, I struggled to find the hallway.  Jeff held my free hand and walked me upstairs to our room to lay down.  I added my second hand to my desperate attempt to keep my head still, yet the room continued to spin.  This went on for about 4 more hours.  The next day Jeff stayed home to drive me to the doctor.  The spinning was much less, but after sitting on the toilet and having to brace myself between the two walls while still experiencing a roller coaster affect, I knew getting behind the wheel of our car was not a good idea.

Doctor asked me tons of questions mostly linked to other conditions (high blood pressure, diabetes, violent throwing up, etc) which all the answers were no.  He diagnosed me with simple "benign vertigo".  He said that it is probably a virus, etc in my inner ear that is causing this.  Usually people don't get it more than once in a lifetime unless there is an underlying cause (tumor, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc), hence all the previous questions.  Just as a side note, I have had vertigo at least two other times, but now close to this "severe".

He told me that there were three things I needed to do:

1. Drink lots of fluid
2. take Rx - Antivert
3. Get rest

When he mentioned the 3rd one, I asked him to elaborate what he meant.  He seemed befuddled by the question and said, "Well, you still have to function and you are a mother of 6, so I don't expect you will be in bed all day..."

So we drove home, picked up the Rx, and I went to bed for the rest of the day.  Sort of nice in the laying in bed sense, not good in the spinning room, and my family having to get a long without me sense.  First night I slept 8 hours, next day I took a 2 hour nap.  Second night slept 11 hours, took a two hour nap.  Third night slept 11 hours, took a three hour nap.  Are you seeing a pattern here?  I was getting between 10 and 14 hours of sleep every day.  And with all this bed time you would think I would be rested and alert.  Nope!  All I thought about was taking a nap.  I had to literally drag/guilt myself out of bed each time.  I knew I was spending way too much time sleeping.  By Sunday evening I had enough.  I ended up coming home early from church (leaving my Primary responsibilities to the Presidency) and going straight to bed.  I slept around 3-4 hours on Sunday too.  I stopped my Rx Sunday night and called my doctor Monday morning.  They got back to me later that day to tell me it was OK to stop taking the medicine, but that if the vertigo came back, I would need to come back in before starting on medication again.  It took 18 hours for that medicine to leave my body.  I literally felt a physical difference, emotional difference, as well as an intillecutal difference.  My mind was no longer clouded.  Thinking complete thoughts came easy to me again.  I felt wonderful.  

Now lest you think that I am exaggerating this in the smallest degree (which I am not) I will relate a conversation my husband and I had a few days ago.  I commented how exhausted and fragile I felt when Jeff agreed that it was really tough.  I responded by asking if it was as tough as pregnancies are.  He said it was worse, that when I had rough patches during pregnancy it only lasted a couple of days.  This was almost a week long.  Poor guy!