A Starry Night

There is some speculation that Van Gogh's "A Starry Night" was inspired by his chronic dizziness. There is speculation that the same dizziness is why he cut off his ear. The disorder put forth as his diagnosis is Ménière's disease.

I was diagnosed with Ménière's disease in 2008, after a violent vertigo attack at work left me sick and incapacitated and had to be driven home by a co-worker. This was not the first sign of Ménière's, but rather the breaking point. There are several symptoms of Ménière's:

1. Aural fullness in the ear (the feeling like you need to pop your ears)
2. Tinnitus
3. Hearing loss
4. Vertigo and dizziness (not the same thing)

It all started with the aural fullness. The earliest record of this I have is 2004. I was flying back from a Blue Stars camp and during descent I got the absolute worst headache I've ever had from my ear. Whether or not this was a migraine I'm not sure, I've not had a headache like that since.

From there, the symptoms mostly vanished for a few years. Any occurrence of them I chalked up to allergies or seasonal changes. In 2007 I started getting more aural fullness, but I didn't know what it was about. Later that year I was woken up with light dizziness, but my ear felt better. This happened twice. Suddenly, a bad connection was made: aural fullness -> dizziness. This was not OK in my book. I saw the campus health doctors who noted that there did seem to be some fluid behind my ear and I was put on antibiotics several times to treat an infection.

During spring break of 2008, I was working for my dad helping move some IT equipment from the old office to the new. The day after the move I got very little sleep and woke up with the worst aural fullness I'd ever had. I couldn't hear a damn thing. I was walking around when I physically felt something in my ear pop and the entire room began to spin violently. After stumbling around randomly for bit, I got sick, and was driven home. Where I was promptly sick, again. I passed out for a few hours and woke up as if nothing had ever happened. The only evidence was my sore throat.

I went back to school and something that happened that destroyed me. I was nauseous for an entire week. I had to miss an entire week of school, mostly unconscious. Eating very little. I had a doctor's appointment later that week due to this but when the time came there was no way I was going to able to ride 40 miles to the doctor without vomiting. I insisted we go to the ER. They diagnosed me with labrynthitis and gave me some meclazine for the nausea and an antibiotic. This cleared everything right up.

The aural fullness remained, however.

I made a doctor's appointment some months later, during Fall 2008 semester. He referred me to an allergist (all the awhile I had already been researching the symptoms on my own) who did a battery of tests and didn't find anything severe but did find some allergies and told me what to do. That regimen of antihistamines and nasal sprays ultimately did nothing (although they are quite reliving during allergy seasons) and I was referred to an otologist.

My ear has the innate ability to be completely and totally fine every time I see my otologist. He diagnosed me with early/atypical Ménière's, where I have most of the symptoms, but not all. After my diagnosis he gave me a diuretic and was instructed to go on a low-sodium diet. Dandy. Whatever works, I thought.

I started my low salt diet and was very strict about it. I have an Excel sheet where I input everything. Nothing got past me. After a few weeks, however, it really began to drain me. I was stressed and was not happy about having to give up a lot of foods, even though I was totally symptom free. I began to experiment. I slowly upped my salt intake to see where my threshold was. I was back to eating my normal garbage and was symptom free. I had no idea. The entire thing had vanished.

I was symptom free for about a year and a half, having changed absolutely nothing.

Then it returns. I had the aural fullness again. I was not happy. I knew, in the back of my head, it was only a matter of time but I just did not want it to happen. I wanted it to be gone. So, I start my diuretic and low salt diet again. Nothing changes. Blah blah blah.

This goes on for some time, and each time my anxiety sky rockets due to the thought of having another debilitating vertigo attack.

In early 2010, I woke up for class and was sitting at my computer and was hit with some random dizziness. What caused this I have no idea but it scared me. It scared me a lot. This means my disorder is no longer following its usual procession. I had dizziness without aural fullness, which had never happened before. I was a bus driver at this time, so I had to see my boss and get clearance for this, which was fine. That's worked out.

A few weeks after that, I'm woken up with the absolute loudest tinnitus I've ever had, coupled with pretty severe hearing loss. Now, I've always had a very high pitched ringing in my ears to begin with but I attributed that to hearing loss from drumming with no ear protection for several years. This was not high pitched, and very annoying. It sounds much like if someone took a clarinet and played middle C right next to your ear. This scared me even more than the dizziness, since this symptom was completely new. I had a panic attack and had to call off work. The tinnitus persisted for 3 days. I woke up later that week with no tinnitus, but with dizziness. Fantastic.

Today the tinnitus came back.

At this stage I'm weighing my options. There are no cures for Ménière's disease. No one knows what causes it, and it affects everyone differently. The only sure-fire solutions is invasive surgery, some of which involve me going deaf in that ear, others involving light brain surgery.

All the awhile I find it difficult to function. If my ear is acting up, I become a wreck. I can't do anything, I'm afraid to leave the house. The unpredictability of the disorder has taken over my life. Medicine helps, but if I continue this route I'll become a drug addict. I've pretty much convinced myself I'd rather be deaf but functional rather than loaded with drugs and have full hearing.

I've been told to consider other choices. Coping mechanisms were suggested, based on how permanent the surgeries are. This would be ideal, if I knew how long the disorder would persist. Ménière's does typically burn out after awhile, but, again, that varies by the person. How much longer should I wait and torment myself with this waiting for a burn out, which will leave me mostly deaf anyway? At the same time, there's a chance it'll go away tomorrow and I'll never have a problem again. Likewise, I'm 22 and I could suffer with this until I'm 60.

I'm left balancing the possibilities of persistent anxiety and other symptoms for years, even decades, or irreversible surgery. If you managed to read this entire thing to the end, what's your input?

Edit: I should also add that there's no guarantee that the condition won't also travel to my other ear.