Part VII - Going from Bad, to Worse, and then Getting Better

    During this entire ordeal, there have been so many more things in my life affected other than my hearing.  I'll begin with the vertigo, since that has really plagued me longer than the hearing loss.

    It's funny, but in the past year I heard so many people that I work with complain of chronic vertigo problems.  I had no idea that as many people suffered from it that do, or that it can really make you as miserable and "useless" as it can.  The first morning I woke up with it, I really didn't know what was going on.  I could in no way walk a straight line, no matter how I focused or tried to control my movements.  Driving was out of the question; when I would look from left to right I felt as if my head was full of about ten gallons of water and could not be held in place.  I wouldn't dare carry my baby anywhere - dropping him was a very real possibility.  Things like stairs gave me the most trouble.  There were several times when I was very lucky to have not fallen.  

    Getting up at night was also particularly difficult.  Our son, Ben, was still taking a bottle once in the middle of the night, so what I would do (in order for my husband to get some rest on school nights) was have my husband bring Ben to me and put him in my lap.  I would then rock him to sleep and feed him, and this would give me time to get woke up enough to be able to take him back to his bed after he finished his bottle.  

    It was a full three months before I could drive once the vertigo really set in.  This was frustrating, because everything suddenly became "family time".  I love my family, but taking everyone grocery shopping, or to the bank, or everywhere else in the world I had to go was such an ordeal.  Taking the new baby along was hard because of everything that had to be packed and prepared first, and it never failed that he would become restless and hungry and need to be changed.  I did send my husband out for things pretty often (or at least more often than I ever had), but I got so bored being at home.  I HAD to get out of the house, and that meant a family outing.

    I did have some help getting over the vertigo.  My ENT doctor and surgeon, Dr. Buchman, recommended vestibular therapy.  This was physical therapy for vertigo, and performed by a physical therapist with a special certification.  From my therapist, and a lot of internet research, I learned that there are many different types of vertigo.  The treatment depends on the cause, type and severity.  What I found amusing about my vertigo was that the drug that had been prescribed to me, by more than one doctor, was actually thought to make the type of vertigo I had much worse.  I was given diazepam, a low dosage of valium, but I found several medical websites that said for patients whose vertigo stems from a bilateral hearing loss, this drug (and several other drugs, including ibuprofen) could make vertigo symptoms worse.  No wonder I wasn't getting any relief!!  So, I stopped taking the valium and started working on my balance and control exercises that the physical therapist showed me.  

    My therapy was done at Thom's Rehad center in Asheville through outpatient physical therapy.  After my initial evaluation, my therapist told me that people do overcome this, but only the people who really work on their exercises.  He said usually a good timeline for overcoming vertigo (to the point of becoming pretty functional again) was about six weeks.  However, he said that I may always have trouble in the dark.  This meant that night driving was probably a thing of the past.  Oh, well, I never enjoyed that anyway.

    I set some goals of being able to drive again and walking without drawing so much attention to myself (my base was very wide, I felt like I was in a scene from "Hear no Evil, See no Evil").  We began with basic eye exercises, looking from side to side, up and down, and then moving my head in different directions while focusing my eyes on a fixed object.  I was supposed to keep an object in focus, then work on speed, and finally do the same exercises with a very busy background.  I also worked on walking heel to toe, then added in some speed, walking backwards, and finally walking with my eyes closed (still can't do that!).  These heel to toe exercises were meant to help me with my balance, and bring my base in. 

    I don't know if I will ever fully have my balance back.  I can tell a marked difference, but when I walk, my vision still jars.  On days when my allergies are acting up I still pull to the side a little (I think I actually tend to do this anyway, but stuffy sinuses seem to make it worse).  But, I can usually get most places on my own.  I have to work on staying very focused and try to control my movements as much as possible.

     Another thing that took a hit was my relationship with my little Anna.  She had always been my baby, even after Ben was born, she was still my baby.  I loved her with every thread of my soul and would do anything for her.  But when I lost my hearing, she went through the most difficult time in her little life.  She couldn't understand why I didn't respond to her the way I always had.  When she would ask for milk or her blanket or a movie - anything - all she got was either a blank stare or even worse - a feeling of being completely ignored by the person who had catered to her every whim her entire life.  I suddenly realized one day that I was avoiding her at all costs.  I was so afraid of being alone with her because every interaction ended up in total frustration for both of us.  I loved her so much, that I stayed away from her; seeing her confused or frustrated was more than I could handle.  

    We even changed her long-time bedtime routine.  I used to always be the last person she saw before going to bed.  Keith would read her a story then I would go in and tell her another story and sing her a song and talk to her about her day and tell her about when I was a little girl.  Our bedtime routine was ridiculously long, but she was my baby.  This was our time, and it was gone.

    Things did, of course, get better with Anna.  As I wrote earlier, on activation day she must have said "Mommy" fifty times in the first half mile of leaving the hospital - I'm not exaggerating.  Every night after getting my hearing back I went to bed with her so we could lie there and watch cartoons and tell stories and giggle and sing and play.  I felt like I had to compensate for all those missed bedtime stories and times of "ignoring" her by being there for her completely and exclusively.  With school starting back, though, we're finally starting to work back to a normal schedule.  

    We just recently had one of our "Girl's Day" outings.  It was the first one since I got my hearing back, and it was so much fun.  It was very simple - lunch at Pizza Hut (where she drew on the menu's, accidentally squashed a mozzarella stick into the carpet, and drank some of her tea - she's a light eater), then a trip to Wal-Mart where we got a Candy Land game.  We played three games of "Dora Candy Land" before she took the game pieces to her Dora playhouse, but it was fun while it lasted.

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