Several Days of Self Care

Aka Getting my Money's Worth from my Bus Ticket This morning at the hospital, I finally after five long months of waiting, had my Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) appointment. It isn't Meniere's! Well, the consultant doesn't think it is Meniere's. She had a look at my history and symptoms and all that was going on and because my audiogram is showing hearing levels of normal, (the same result as the November audiogram) then it doesn't correlate to what Meniere's should look like. Thing is, we do not know what is actually going on. I'm to keep taking Serc (betahistine dihydrochloride) and see how it goes over the next six months - it may settle and go away, or it may not. To be honest, the number of attacks/episodes that I've had has seemed to decrease but my ear does seem to twitch, ache and do a weird hollow sounding thing from time to time (which might be Patulous Eustachian Tube, how fancy). Dizziness I still get most days but this can be triggered d...

Aka It Wasn't as Bad as I Thought it Would Be I've not posted with quite the same regularity that I normally would. This is because yesterday I had my telephone assessment for the Depression and Anxiety Service, and today was my first day back to work. Also I went bouldering and it was a blast! First of all, the assessment I had was pretty thorough, and lasted about an hour. My fingers hurt by the end of it, but I'm glad that I got to explain a bit of background and get the ball rolling on treatment. I tried my best not to rattle off everything that had gone wrong, or what made me anxious, or to bad mouth my ex too much, but all in all I got to provide enough information to give my supporter a rough idea of where I was coming from. I had to answer two questionnaires - one on depression and the other for anxiety. On the depression one I scored 8 out of something - mild symptoms and in line with the general population so not one to be concerned about. For anxiety, my scor...

Aka Getting Better Isn't Linear Yesterday was a bad day. I took a shower and after I was done, I hung my towel up and burst in to tears. Seeing my hair continue to go down the drain in quantities above what's normal for the amount I should be shedding is distressing. Gone was the thought of "it's just hair" and I was taken over with an all-encompassing grief that it is still falling out. Though I've not had the steroid cream long, it doesn't seem to be working. I want it to stop. I want the tingling that I've had on the right hand side of my scalp to stop. I don't want to have to wear a headscarf, I don't want to pay out for a wig. I want my hair back. I stupidly googled alopecia areata and then found out that large patches may not grow back. Patches on the side or back of the head are less likely to grow back than on the top. I don't know if what I have counts as 'large.' I tried to call the dermatology department at the hospital...

Aka My Immune System is Attacking My Hair Folks, I promise I'll do a more positive post soon! I have one lined up, but I'm trying to work my way through everything that's causing me to feel the way I'm feeling. When I had my GP appointment when I got signed off I was also diagnosed with alopecia areata. This is where hair falls out in patches on the scalp (it can also affect your beard if you're of the beardy persuasion). There are two other types - alopecia totalis, which affects the whole scalp, and alopecia universalis which affects the entire body. According to my in-depth research (*cough* Wikipedia *cough*) alopecia is an autoimmune disease where the body attacks hair follices in that particular area (in this case, the back of my head on the left hand side). Specifically, T-cell lymphocytes cluster around the affected hair follicles causing inflammation and hair loss. Personally I think anything with 'T-cell' in it sounds like something out of Resi...

Aka Why Saying "Don't Worry About It" Doesn't Work Being still is not my strong point. I'm not the kind of person that can sit on a sofa all day: I always have to be doing something. My life is a plethora of activity. Sunday is a good example. I got up, had coffee, went to a clothes sale, went to a charity shop and bought fabric, picked up some white spirit on the way home. Got home, painted a few things, varnished another, reupholstered a seat. Next thing I know it's 3pm. Made bread, cooked dinner, ate dinner, did another layer of painting, wrote a blog post, did a set of exercises from an app on my phone, had a bath, went to bed. If I am sat down with no activity I get fidgety and antsy. I have this time, I need to use it. I need to make something with it. I like reading and the odd video game but because I'm not creating something, they fall by the wayside whilst I pour my energy into arts and crafts. I enjoy doing these things - they're fun, and...

Aka How I Got Into This Mess in the First Place I started Several Days of Self Care because, as mentioned in the previous post, I was signed off sick from work for a week or so (hence several instead of seven ). As Julie Andrews' saccharine nun says in The Sound of Music, let's start at the very beginning. On 30 November 2018 I came back from my honeymoon. Feeling incredibly dizzy in the kitchen as I was about to cook dinner, I thought I was jet-lagged and went to bed. The dizziness however, persisted. After speaking to the audiologists we have at work and a trip to the doctor's, I was diagnosed with Benign Paroxysmal Positioning Vertigo (BPPV), a condition where crystals in the inner ear mess about with the balance system. I was told it would clear up within two weeks. It did not and I returned to the GP where I had the Dix-Hallpike manoeuvre performed (not as fancy as it sounds, you get pulled backwards over a bench and they look to see if your eyes are twitching), ...

Aka Things I'm Doing to Stop Myself Becoming a Sad Potato Yesterday I was signed off work with stress and anxiety. It's been brewing for a while and, whilst I feel guilty about not being there with my colleagues, it's probably the right thing to have done. Back in December of 2018 I was referred to the hospital as they suspect I have Meniere's Disease - a rare chronic illness that brings on bouts of vertigo and can lead to profound hearing loss in the affected ear. I won't go in to details here as I plan on leaving it for another post, but having the fear associated with that is where a lot of my anxiety and worries have come from. Alongside this, my hair has been falling out and I was diagnosed with alopecia areata, and I'm also going to have my bloods taken as well as my doctor wants to rule out any possibility of a thyroid condition. When I first had the Meniere's referral, and finding out it would take so long, I found myself despairing. Attacks happ...