Labyrinthitis

[annwfyn]

So, it appears, having visited the doctor, that I have labyrinthitis. What this means is that I have a virus in my inner ear which is putting all my balance off whack. Therefore if I'm sitting entirely still on the sofa, I pretty much feel alright. If I get up, walk about, try and walk up or down stairs, I start feeling rather shonky. It's a bit like being constantly slightly sea-sick, and, for some odd reason, I am also feeling a little bit odd and tearful. I do remember having that when I had an inner ear infection before. I thought I had depression. The doctor told me I needed antibiotics.

I now have drugs, which the very nice doctor tells me should sort me out fairly soon. However, I'll be home for today, and maybe tomorrow, and mostly confined to the sofa. So, should anyone want my attention, I'm almost certainly all yours...

Comments

[ulaidhan.livejournal.com]

Best of luck with a swift recovery.

The vast majority of people are wholly better within a month at most; most of the rest, within a season or so.

Chronic labyrinthitis is what I have - and have had since 2004. I seem set to have it for the rest of my life (I appear to have permanent damage to the labyrinths). If you find that the drugs do nothing (or have side-effects that outweigh any benefits), ask to get changed to different ones. There are a host of anti-nausea drugs, and there are several different ways in which they can work. There's no guarantee that any will wholly remove the symptoms while you're prone to them, but it should be possible to find something that will make a noticable difference to how you feel.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Thank you. As I've said elsewhere, I seem to have a comparatively mild version - I feel fine as long as I'm basically just sitting on the sofa, and I can stand up and walk around - I'm not falling over. It just feels as if I'm walking on a swaying ship, and suffering from very bad seasickness as a result.

I think if the nausea can be stopped, I'll be OK, as long as I don't try and do anything too dramatic. My main issue is that I'm a bit scared of the tube at the moment, especially in rush hour. I really don't much like the idea of navigating that, especially when I'm so unsteady on my feet.

[ulaidhan.livejournal.com]

It's worthwhile trying to stay active - but "active" can simply mean that you don't give in to temptation and spend all day as stationary as possible.

Avoiding the Tube would certainly be wise. You're likely to find that any crowded environment is extremely challenging. The more severely you're affected, the more you lose the ability to place yourself in relation to the world: in effect, to provide the apparently stationary centre-point of perception around which you place everything else you perceive.

Even if you're only mildly affected, the surrounding chaos of a crowded Tube ride is likely to rapidly overload your ability to cope.

That said, victims of it will almost always find that there are very variable effects within their own experience. Crudely speaking, you've got a labyrinth system to govern your perception of each of the three dimensions, and they won't all be affected to the same extent. Myself, I've never once fallen over and hit the ground (though I've bounced off a great many walls and people) - my vertical perception is comparatively untouched, but the other two dimensions are seriously screwy (to the extent that my sense of balance is now almost entirely visual).

You can probably figure out what's particularly bad for you to do, and what you can cope with quite easily - and from that, you might be able to figure out ways of doing things with least possible aggravation to your balance.

Likewise, there's a very good chance that one ear is much more seriously affected than the other. That can lead to effects as simple as turning your head right being fine while turning your head left causes horrible problems. When it first happens, you tend not to be paying attention to any sort of triggers like that - you're just aware that you're feeling dreadful and sometimes stagger helplessly while the world moves beneath and around you. But if there is something like this, you can try to learn to always turn the right way, or to turn your whole body rather than just your head....