The Curse of Social Gatherings

I went out for a class reunion yesterday evening, but I wasn’t feeling very well so I knew it was going to be an effort. Fortunately I managed to get through the evening, although I had a couple of moments when I felt particularly unwell and I was generally rather unsteady on my feet. I felt a lot better towards the end of the evening though – I don’t know if I got a boost from eating, whether it was the Betahistine I took immediately after eating, or whether it was just one of those things. I was irrationally annoyed later that I couldn’t have felt as good as that all evening, but that’s the way Meniere’s is.

On the subject of the meal, it was not an auspicious day to begin measuring my sodium intake. I chose to eat pasta with vegetables, salmon and bacon… yes I know, the bacon was the weak link, and it certainly was salty, but I ploughed on regardless, so really I’ve only myself to blame for any consequences – if indeed there are any. I have to also add, that with my focus moving around rather more than I would like, the task of eating publicly took a great deal of my concentration and was not a very enjoyable experience. I don’t know whether it’s really wise to push myself to go out when I’m so under the weather, but the impending journey to Korea puts a four-mile round trip to the pub with friends into perspective.

Another thing I hadn’t quite thought through was the potential consequences of my hearing difficulties. I explained to my friends at the start of the evening that I had gone a bit deaf in my right ear, but that’s a gross oversimplification – more than anything I find it difficult to differentiate between foreground and background sounds. I suppose the effect is the same, if the reasons are more complicated. But the trouble was that I think I must have appeared to ignore people once or twice, or perhaps worse, I didn’t laugh at their jokes when I should have. There was quite a bit of polite smiling at conversations further away on the table which I was, in truth, struggling to follow. It occurred to me after an early faux pas that if I wasn’t careful Meniere’s could lead to me losing friends.

I was glad when one of my friends told me that he’d read up on the condition when I’d told him I had it. It makes me feel that it was a good thing to have decided to be open about it, if not a little too open, in the name of public education. Still, while I did once ponder on this subject for some time, had I tried to keep it as private as possible, I suppose people would have started to think I was seriously ill or on drugs or something... so perhaps there really wasn't any choice.