My name is Debbie, I am 45 years old and I have dealt with the horrible disabling disease called Meniere’s Disease since November of 1997
I started out with ringing in my left ear about six months prior to having symptoms of the Meniere’s Disease itself. I went to three Dr’s when I developed the ringing because it was so loud that it interfered with my daily living. I even had a hard time sleeping at night. The Dr’s told me that I had tinnitus and there was nothing that could be done for it.
I was told I would have to just learn to live with it.
Finally, in November of 1998, I was working and started developing some dizziness every time I bent over or moved my head too fast from one side to the other or up and down. I worked at this job for about nine years. I was a home health aide and my job required a lot of traveling.
I was out of town the day that the dizziness started. I noticed at a patient’s home while I was doing some dressing changes that every time I bent or moved my head I got dizzy. I had never been dizzy before in my life and it really concerned me. I left the patient’s home and had about an hour’s drive before I got back to the office where I worked. I noticed that the whole time that I was driving in that I could not focus on anything or move my head very fast or I would get dizzy.
It was about three in the afternoon and I just thought that maybe I was dizzy because I hadn’t eaten anything all day because I had been so busy that day and running behind. I finally made it back to the office and they had a big dinner that day where everyone brought in pot luck for Thanksgiving. I got out of my car and was thinking that I would go in and eat something before I did my paper work for the day to see if it would get rid of the dizziness. As I was walking from the car towards the office door, I noticed that I felt an imbalance and couldn’t walk a straight line.
I was really beginning to get scared. When I got to the door and walked in, there was a friend of mine sitting at her desk and had been watching me walk towards the building. She asked me if I had been nipping the bottle and laughed at me.
She thought that I was just putting on an act and being silly. I told her that there was something wrong with me and explained to her what was happening with me. She asked me if I felt sick at my stomach. I told her no. I then tried to hurry back and get something to eat.
I ate gobs and gobs of food hoping that it would take care of the dizziness. After stuffing myself, I went back out to my car to get my paperwork and get it done so I could go home. The dizziness kept getting worse.
As I got back to the door again, I couldn’t even focus on the handle to open the door and instead of walking up the sidewalk I was wandering around on the grass. I managed to get the door opened and my friend, which is an R.N. meet me at the door this time and told me to stop it because I was starting to scare her.
I told her that I wasn’t fooling around and that something was really wrong. By this time she knew I was serious and asked me again if I felt sick at my stomach. I told her no and then tried to show her by turning my head when I felt the most dizzy.
The next thing I knew is that they were carrying me back to the bathroom and holding my head up over the toilet so I could throw up. My whole world starting spinning out of control and I couldn’t even hold my own head up over the stool to vomit.
The boss, which is an R.N. also came in and picked me up and carried me to his truck and took me to a Dr’s office there in town. The whole trip there he was holding me up with one hand and driving with the other. I couldn’t sit up on my own. By that time I had tossed everything that I had eaten and had dry heaves so bad that I thought I was going to die.
I laid on the table at the Dr’s office for about three hours before the spinning stopped. The Dr. told me that I had an inner ear infection and gave some antibiotics along with meclizine for the nausea and sent me home. My daughter came and got me from the Dr’s office.
I was totally drained for about three days after the first attack. I noticed that my ear felt like someone had filled it full of water and put a plug in it and the ringing got ten times worse as if it wasn’t bad enough to start with. I finally went back to work after taking off for four days.
About a week and a half later after getting off work I was standing in the laundry room folding my clothes and my daughter happened to be here. I noticed that I was beginning to feel a little funny and my ear started ringing out of control.
All of a sudden my world started spinning again and I fell to the floor. My daughter wanted to call the ambulance but I refused and told her to just get me something to throw up in and please leave me alone. I laid on the floor for about two hours this time heaving my insides out before this attack left and I was able to get up and walk to the bed. After the second attack, I really began to get concerned.
This started my numerous visits to different Dr’s. and ENT’s. I won’t go into detail on how many attacks or how many Dr’s that I went to see.
My life was a living nightmare and I was very depressed and confined myself to the house as much as possible. I was afraid to even go out in public because I never knew when an attack was going to hit. They would come with no warning. I ended up in the floor at some stores while shopping and ran off the road while driving once. I finally decided that it was unsafe for me to drive.
Finally a friend told me about a Dr. in Springfield, Mo. that was really good and she knew that he had the answer for me. By this time I had lost all faith in any Dr. but decided to give it a try. I had to pay out of my own pocket for this Dr. because he wasn’t a provider on my insurance plan.
This was in May of 1998. The Dr. ran a bunch of tests including MRI’s Cat scans and the whole nine yards. He then told me that he could see nothing wrong on any of the tests and ruled out any tumors and said that there was only one thing that it could be.
He told me that he thought that I had Meniere’s Disease. He told me that he didn’t treat Meniere’s but had a good friend that had his practice in Kansas City, Mo. and has had great success treating the disease. He sat me up an appointment with the Dr. which was about a five hour drive from where I lived.
For the first time, since the drop attacks started I felt a little relief. I went to see the Dr. and he ran numerous tests also and confirmed that I did have Meniere’s Disease. He then explained all the treatments that he offered and told me that he had great results in treating Meniere’s and stopping my vertigo and drop attacks.
He first offered a surgery called shunt where they went in and cut out a small piece of my skull behind the left ear and inserted a tube into the sac that isn’t draining properly. The tube is suppose to drain the fluid to the spinal column. After the surgery, I went home with high hopes. He told me that there was a 66% chance of it working.
For the first two weeks I had a very bad balance problem after the surgery which was normal. I had no drop attacks for about six weeks and was beginning to enjoy life again. The hearing in my left ear is very bad. I lost almost 75% of my hearing.
Then one day I got out of bed and started off to work again as usual. I had put the drop attack nightmare behind me. All of a sudden my world started spinning out of control again and I fell to the floor again. This time it lasted for over four hours. I heaved so much that my whole body hurt.
I called the Dr. back and told him the next day what had happened and he told me to give it a little more time. The vertigo and drop attacks came back full force over the next several weeks, only ten times worse than they were before the surgery. My life was in an uproar again and my nightmare had returned.
I then went back to the Dr. and he said that scar tissue had grown over the tube and that was why it stopped working. He then started me on Gentamycin injections to kill out the balance nerve in my inner ear. This was a nightmare in itself. When the nerve is killed out, then the other side of your brain has to learn how to work without using the other and the imbalance is horrible.
I had three injections into the inner ear and still having the attacks and vertigo. He told me that it may take as many as seven injections before the nerve was completely destroyed. He had to give the injections in very small doses to keep from destroying any more hearing that I had left. I had to take one injection then wait for several weeks to see how it worked.
If there was no success then I had to go back for another one. I finally gave up after the third injection. I would schedule an appointment but end up canceling it before the visit. I did this several times. I felt as if my life wasn’t worth living anymore and that nothing was going to help.
I then happened to be looking in a site on the internet one evening on Meniere’s after getting my strength back after having a bad vertigo and drop attack. I ran across a story about someone that also had Meniere’s and was looking for help also.
She had mentioned a site that she had found on someone selling natural supplements but didn’t have the money to invest into it and was wondering if anyone had any information for her to help with her Meniere’s.
She just happened to give the e-mail address of the site that was selling the supplements. I decided to check into it but had no intention of buying natural supplements. I had taken Valium, Prednisone, Meclizine, diuretics and many more with no help.
I read the story of the lady that was advertising the supplements and her husband also had Meniere’s Disease. She told how the supplements had stopped the vertigo and symptoms of Meniere’s Disease for her husband. I was very skeptical but decided to send her an e-mail and ask about the supplements.
The lady, whose name is Karin, got back to me with-in minutes. We exchanged e-mail for some time and then she asked for my phone number where she could call me and explain more about it. I gave her my number and she called with-in a few minutes. She talked to me for about an hour and told me how great the products were and that they were 100% money back guarantee.
I was very skeptical and really didn’t want to try them and knew that they probably wouldn’t work but thought that I couldn’t lose anything if I could get my money back. She told me exactly what I needed and how many to take. My shipment arrived with-in a week.
I started on the the products in December of 2001 and have taken them faithfully since. The first few weeks of taking the supplements, I felt kind of like I had the flu and wanted to quit. Didn’t seem like the dizzy spells or vertigo was getting any better.
Karin had already told me that my body would go through a detox stage and that I needed to continue taking them. After being on the products for about four weeks I noticed that my dizzy spells were gone and the vertigo had stopped.
I have not had one dizzy spell, vertigo or drop attack since the second week in January of 2002.
I would encourage anyone out there with Meniere’s Disease to try this product. I have my life back and have more energy than I have had since I was a teen-ager. I won’t go one day without the supplements. I still can’t believe that I went through all the surgery and treatments when all I needed was something natural that my body was lacking and being deprived of.
I still have a little ringing and the hearing will not come back. The ringing has even went down to where I can live with it now. I can even at times not even notice that it is there at all. These products are amazing. Anyone out there that is living with this horrible disabling disease, PLEASE give this product a chance!!!!
- If you would like a copy of our Meniere’s Disease Study Guide, please click here. This guide is a step by step journey exploring your symptoms and what may be causing them.
- If you would like more information on the system that David, and numerous others, have used, please click here; What Finally Worked.
- If you have any health questions or concerns, please feel free to Contact Us and we will be happy to share our knowledge and ideas with you.
Karin Henderson, Retired Nurse
(604) 463-8666 – Pacific Standard Time