My heart in sharing with others has always been the intent of encouraging them. Waiting for happy/healthy post ideas is causing me not to blog at all.
This is for those of you who deal with chronic health issues.
Sometimes it may well be the simple things causing present problems.
Several weeks ago I began feeling sudden jolts of severe pain in my left ear. These horrible sensations were not new to me. Yet the fact that I was feeling this at all was frightening. You see in 2006 I had brain surgery to stop the jolts of pain called Trigeminal Neuralgia
I began to question my Neuro Surgeons assurance that it would never come back. I went to see a friend who is also a Nurse Practitioner to see if I could have a simple ear infection. (Due to the flu epidemic I did not want to sit in my family Dr’s waiting room for him to look) She said that I did have fluid behind my ear drum. She recommended I take a second-generation antihistamine daily to see if this dried up the fluid thus stopping my pain. Over the next month the jolts of pain became less and less. I’m not feeling them at all now.
Soon after I came down with a case of shingles. I called my Neurologist (again not my Family Dr. b/c I knew his waiting room surely has become a petri dish of flu) He prescribed anti viral medication and because of my recent concerns with the TN pain and fatigue etc., he recommended a round of oral steroids. In his words “to nip it in the bud” I almost always refuse the steroids. Yet this time I was tired of feeling tired and in pain etc. So I took them. *another post about the fact that I have MS later*
My shingles had initially seemed to respond to the anti-viral meds becoming less inflamed. But as soon as the steroid/ anti viral prescriptions were finished the shingles did re-inflame. They also began to look infected. So now I was afraid. I called my family Dr. and after I told his office girl my fear of sitting in his waiting room she suggested that I come in as 1st patient and wait for him in one of the freshly cleaned exam rooms. (should have done this right off the bat)
He said #yes this looked like a case of shingles #2 the infection in them looked like something he had seen before on an immune compromised patient. He suggested that steroids are not good to take with shingles because they suppress your immune system. So he is treating me with more anti-viral drugs and antibiotics.
As time has gone on during these recent health issues I’ve become more and more fatigued and dizzy. Of course I blamed this on having the shingles, being on so many drugs and my MS.
Yet today it hit me: Could the drug I began a month ago for the fluid behind my ear causing me this extreme fatigue and dizziness? I texted with the Nurse Practitioner and she said that Zyrtec could cause tiredness but usually doesn’t. Guess I’ll try another.
