Vestibular Rehabilitation

I went to my neurologist and mentioned that I was occasionally dizzy. He did an in-office test that made me very, very dizzy. As I lay there feeling miserable, he stopped back by the office to tell me I had a vestibular problem.

Embarrassed that I didn't know the word "vestibular," I came home and looked it up. Well, it means "inner ear." Talk about relief. I was sure it was a part of the brain I hadn't heard of, one that would cause worse problems than I and others I've heard about have had. 

Now if you learned "vestibular" when you were five years old, don't tell me. I kept telling myself I should know it, but...

Anyway, now I know it. 

The neurologist told me I would need to see a physical therapist, but first he gave me a prescription to help with the dizziness. If you've been dizzy,you have probably taken Meclizine. It did wonders for me. After a couple of days I felt much better and then I wasn't dizzy at all.

So I swanned into the physical therapist's lab sure that she would give me simple exercises. First she had me do a few things, such as looking at several things by just moving my head with my eyes open.  I could not do it. My eyes went in every direction.

Then she held something in front of me that I was to look at while moving my head. Couldn't do that either. My eyes went on journeys that time, too.

Before long, I was dizzy and nauseated again. So she gave me exercises that were exactly the things that had just made me feel lousy again. This is "vestibular rehabilitation," she said. And she added that I had to do them several times a day.

Since I left her office, I have imagined the minuscule parts of my inner ear running laps and lifting weights. I hope it's working. I'm not doing my routine nearly as frequently as I should.

But I have a few days before I have to go back to her lab again. Surely in that time I'll make up for the time I'm missing now. At least I hope so. I hate for the parts of my inner ear to have to keep up their vigorous exercises. 

They Will Not Take Care of You

Do not kid yourself when you are in a hospital, a rehab center, a nursing home or any similar place: They Will Not Take Care of You.

I have been in hospitals and rehab centers more than once. In each case I thought I would be safe. In most, I was not. There were good staff members but there were also awful ones. The extent you could take care of yourself depended on how sane or coherent you were.

Once I was in a psychiatric hospital. I was horribly depressed. Words could not begin to describe it. I got sicker and sicker and finally the stupid psychiatrist who put me there decided I had full dementia. 

Yes, I know I used the adjective “stupid.”

The staff people there were horrible. As I got worse, so did they. They had treated us with contempt before; as I became helpless, they just ignored me. I am sure they treated other disturbed patients the same way. One nurse had responsibility for an entire floor; the rest of the staff were aides who did not want to deal with sick people.If you did not need the nurse, you did not see her.

Think of that. The aides did not want to deal with sick people. Yes, it was a psychiatric hospital but several people I knew before I became incoherent were also physically sick. 

I would have died from what the psychiatrist called dementia, but I did not have that. In a moment of good fortune, my doctor saw a neurologist walk into the hospital. He asked him to look me over to confirm that I was demented. 

In one of my luckiest moments, the neurologist immediately saw what was wrong with me.  He sent me to a “real” hospital where a neurosurgeon removed a meningioma, a benign tumor, from my brain in an emergency operation. The meningioma had caused the pressure that drove my depression over several years, which ended in dementia-like symptoms.

That episode was not my only encounter with terrible staff people. I was in a rehab center near my home recently after another meningioma operation. For the second time, I had to learn to walk again.

This was an instructive time because when I entered the center I was a bit off-center, to put it mildly. I felt as if I was fine but I did things like falling out of wheel chairs. And, occasionally, I would say things that didn’t make sense.

That gave the hostile aides a chance. I learned quickly how mean they could be. Luckily, I was usually OK and could call them on it. Soon those people avoided my room, and I made friends with the pleasant staff members.

And that was not all I’ve been through. I’ll stop listing specific instances but they have been way too numerous.

Why am I starting this blog with this story? I want to let you all know that you must be aware of what is going on around you. You must be aware of what can happen if you lose the ability to speak up for yourself. You must be sure you have a family member or close friend who will take care of you.

I know that is not always possible, but you must try. And I’ll close with a story that I think makes my point better than anything I’ve lived through.

I have often believed that people with a whole lot of money can buy the best care. That is not always true.

A wealthy friend of mine has a severely demented relative who is in a very expensive nursing facility. I was sure she was getting the best care. But when I spoke with my friend not long ago, he said hated the days he or other relatives couldn’t get there.

He is sure that the woman they love is left wet and possibly unfed if they aren’t present.

I guess the lesson in this is that money certainly helps but it doesn’t guarantee perfection. Very poor people or very rich people may be in settings where they are correctly cared for. The rest of us have to take care of ourselves as well as we can.