Retreat and Regroup

On Sunday morning at 4am I gave up trying to sleep, and got up to take another 8mg Betahistine tablet - my third in 12 hours. I had spent Saturday evening and the time up to this feeling nauseous, which coupled with the loud tinnitus in my right ear was preventing me sleeping. I had tried the usual tinnitus trick of keeping the TV on (in the UK I used to leave the radio on all night), but it didn't work this time. I finally slept from 5am, but awoke at 8.45am with the sound in my right ear muffled and feeling sufficiently sick to get me out of bed to make a drink.

I decided to take my Betahistine dose back up to 16mg per time by taking two 8mg tablets three times a day, and I'll probably keep this up for a week and see if there's any sign of improvement. If there is, then it's more circumstantial evidence in support of the link between this drug and my personal health, and more practically, I'm going to have to make a serious effort to obtain some more even though it doesn't appear to be available in this country.

So I pulled myself together with some difficulty - I showered but passed on shaving for a second day - and went out for lunch with my wife and her mother - checking that I had my anti-vomiting pills with me that I know should be in my wallet at all times but sometimes you need the comfort of seeing them there. My only condition was that we went somewhere nearby we could walk to. For the first time in months I experienced genuine stress at the idea of leaving the safety of the apartment - I'd forgotten how I used to worry about every excursion no matter how small when I went through my bad patches in the UK. There's no doubt in my mind that stress is a legitimate reaction in a Meniere's sufferer to the knowledge of what might face if they should have an attack in public, but I always worry about locking myself into a Catch-22 downwards spiral of not going out of fear, and gradually winding myself up to a point where I never want to step out of the door again.

Anyway, despite my efforts I was a bit too tired to be good company over lunch even though with some food inside me and perhaps some exercise I began to feel my symptoms easing.

In the afternoon I was sufficiently revived to finally get around to shaving, but by the evening the sense of pressure in my head had escalated again and even though I kept working at my computer it wasn't easy. I tend to write a lot but it's especially hard when the brain-fog descends, and there have been times when I've come back to something I've written while suffering symptoms, which has just been a grammatical or intellectual mess even though it seemed perfectly coherent at the time. Sorry if this is one of them.

While things might not sound too good it's important to note that I'm still functioning, and I know that's a lot better than things could be.