Oh, my goodness! Stop the world, I want to get OFF! Spinning,
and spinning, and spinning! Holding onto the mattress so it doesn't throw
me onto the floor! Move my head even the slightest and nauseau
follows. Oh-h-h, man. Dry heaves for a whole day.
Uughh. I try walking across the room, and I end up on my hands and knees
crawling so that I don't topple over and smack my head on the floor or the
corner of a piece of furniture. (Grab the minicam kids! She's fallen
and can't get up!)
As a child, throwing my hands out and twirling around the front yard a
million times until I couldn't walk in a straight line was funny. THIS is
not funny. This is ugly.
John had this once before, and he ended up in the emergency room. We
found out then that it was an inner ear problem. Oh, yeah... we knew
that, because John's mother has Meniere's Disease. That's characterized
by vertigo. She had to have a nerve cut in one ear before they got the
vertigo fully under control. But John's vertigo was simply mega-allergies
fouling up his inner ear and making him spin.
So when I started spinning out of control we thought it might be allergies,
too. I started immediately taking allergy medications. That held
the nausea at bay for about 24 hours. Finally, I called my doctor back in Texas, explained the
problem and asked that he phone some super-duper prescription into our local
Wal-Mart pharmacy. Hours later his nurse called back saying one of the
prescriptions I was already taking could be causing the problem:
Cymbalta.
You see, I have Sjogren's Disease. Sounds terrible, doesn't it.
In fact, it's a form of arthritis. It is an autoimmune disease that
results in the abnormal production of extra antibodies in the blood that are
directed against various tissues of the body. It's characterized by dry
mouth, dry lips, and dry eyes, fatigue, joint pain, difficulty
swallowing. Nothing incapacitating, but combined it can make you pretty
miserable. I had all of the above and went to a series of doctors before finally
convincing my Primary that, by jingo, I'd been in this body over half a century
(sounds good, doesn't it? That just meant I was over 50.) I'd been
in this body over half a century, and I KNOW something is wrong. I had
just spent six weeks deployed to New Orleans and
Port Arthur, Texas for disaster relief with the Southern
Baptist of Texas Convention ministry. Perhaps I had acquired some kind of
bacteria that was the problem. But SOMEONE needs to take me
seriously. He did. He did blood tests for everything under the
sun. Finally he came up with two possibilities that explained the
symptoms and sent me to a rheumatologist. Overnight I ended up on six
prescriptions and told to, for the dry eyes, see my ophthalmologist. That
resulted in a seventh prescription.
The Cymbalta is for the migrating joint and tissue pains throughout my
body. I had run out of my prescription and it took several days (well,
actually, about two weeks) for me to get a refill. Apparently, withdrawal
from Cymbalta ain't pretty. That's where the vertigo came from.
Once I got the prescription it took six days to get my equilibrium back.
Now I know that, if I ever want to get off the Cymbalta, I had better e-e-ease
off of it. I'm taking the lowest dosage (thank goodness), but even so
I'll have to have a plan if I ever decide to ditch the Cymbalta.
So now you know where I've been for a week - flat on my back holding onto
the mattress so as to not fall out of bed. For the first four days all I
had to eat was soda crackers, water and a little Pedialyte. I wouldn't
recommend it as a weight loss program. And ALL of this time John has
catered to me, cleaned house, done dishes, the whole kit 'n caboodle.
What a man! Why! I think I'll keep him another 25 years!
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