Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

It is still early in the recovery phase since my last gentamicin injection.  It has been about 9 weeks since that time, but only 6 weeks since I started feeling the good and not-so-good effects of it.  No more vertigo being the positive outcome, but a sense of disequilibrium (pretty mild this time around) and general bobble-headedness being the necessary evil.

I have had a few days recently where I felt almost normal.  When I don't feel normal it is because my head feels disconnected from my body and my ear is buzz-sawin' to the max.  My eyes seem to have a delay in registering with my brain what it is I am seeing when I turn my attention from one point of reference to another.  And, after riding in, or driving, a car, it takes a minute or two for my body to stop moving.  It is the same sensation I have experienced after disembarking from boat rides - getting my land legs, so to speak.

My hearing is now no doubt worse in my right ear.  I have been getting back to walking regularly and listening to music using earbuds.  This morning I took the earbud out of my left (good) ear and could hear almost nothing in my right ear.  I moved the earbud to my left ear and could hear clear as day.  I remember my hearing being worse after my first gent shot too, but that it improved a bit 4 or 5 months later.  Of course, that may not happen this time around since I have had the subsequent shots.  Trying to understand what anyone is saying if there is any noise in the background requires extreme effort and some lip-reading.  Exhausting...

And then there is the symptom many of us with Meniere's complain about: the Technical Term, I think, being brain-fog.  I have had episodes of this since Day One of Meniere's, usually around the time of an attack.  So I don't think this is a result of the gent.  But when I feel this way, my short-term memory is virtually nonexistent.  I spend most of my time on those days wondering what the H.E. double hockeysticks I was just doing.  I bounce around from one thing to the next like a pinball.  Sometimes I bounce back to, and finish, the tasks I started, sometimes I am sure I don't.

So I keep reminding myself of the one thing I begged for during all those times my world was spinning round and round: anything, ANYTHING would be better than vertigo.  I swore I would live my life to the fullest if the vertigo would just stop.  So I am keeping that promise, soldiering on, and trying my best not to complain.  Ok, except maybe here.