the eighth cranial circle of hell

Today I spent four hours at the doctor's office and left with the most definitive diagnoses I've had yet: vestibular neuronitis, or inflammation of the eighth cranial nerve. I'm not supposed to be dizzy (still) if it was just BPPV. I'd prepared a list of questions and S. helped me make sure that all of them got answered, even the ones that seemed out of left field, like "Marijuana helps immensely with the nausea but will it negatively affect healing?" (The Answer, from a grey-haired Jewish otolaryngologist with big yellow teeth and balls of spittle in the corners of his mouth: "I don't know.") We asked about activity levels, concentration, reading, computer time (yes, it can be very hard, time reading and writing needs to be limited), the constant nausea...I can do what I want (within reason) exercise wise, though a cane/walking stick would help; valium is supposed to relax me enough to also relax the inflammation (interesting) but it will only mask the symptoms too...I'm supposed to give it three to four weeks and if I'm not much better, more tests.

The NP started to clean out debris from the bad/sensitive ear and I got to this point after which I could not go on...the vacuum in my ear, that sensation that your brain is being sucked out, the sharp pain...I simply started to weep, my hands over my face, and said, over and over, "I'm sorry, please, I just can't take it, I just can't, I'm sorry..." and so she stopped, and S. was there holding my hand and I could hear her crying too...it was embarrassing and I felt like a coward but everything in me just said STOPGet out of thereLeave me aloneI've HIT A WALL OF DESPAIR and I cannot climb over it.

Next, a very nice (Family, I think) audiologist named Mike came and took S. and I to the audiology "chamber" wherein I had my hearing tested. I am profoundly unbalanced in my hearing (of course) and have a 73% loss (approx.) in my right ear. My left ear is holding its own, but needs to be watched very carefully. We discussed BAHA, which is a new-ish procedure that works by using a titanium screw as a sound conductor--the screw is literally placed in the skull and then there's this little device that you hook on to the screw that works as the amplifier. It's fascinating technology, and I am the "perfect" candidate for it, but I'm not all that sure that I want a screw in my head. I'm screwed up enough.

Mike went over my tests with S. and I and then took us back to the microscope room, where eventually I saw a real ENT (instead of a NP with an ENT bent), precipitated, I'm sure, by my small breakdown in the chair. He did the Hall Pike manuever, poked and prodded, suctioned more out of my ear (he was very gentle, actually) asked me lots of questions and then gave me a diagnosis. "So it's just a waiting game, really," I said. "Pretty much," he said.

It took the pharmacy a long time to fill one script for valium. Finally, S. and I stepped out of the Kaiser building and into the hot, windy afternoon. I had a diagnosis, yes, but as we all know, medicine is an inexact science. They can't SEE my inner ear so they can't KNOW 100% what it is that makes my life so imbalanced and "off", but I'll take what they can give me at this point. It beats thinking that I'm dying, or that I'll have to go on disability at work. I have been cleared, at least, to WALK. And that will be my salvation, pukey stomach or no.