Anita Simmons And Doug Simmons

My name is Anita, In April of 2014 I started to experience some severe dizziness and I went to the Doctor and they put me thru physical therapy which helped to a certain extent but the dizziness never would entirely go away. Some days were worse than others and then I started noticing other things like loss of smell, a very salty taste in my mouth, losing the ability to taste food, my hearing got to the point it was muffled yet amplified at the same time, I could hear things but couldn't figure out what it was but yet the noise of anything was just like a knife piercing thru my eardrums. The pain I was experiencing in my ears was extreme at times. Then I started to get severe pressure in the left side of my head, the Doctor was giving me narcotics for pain but it was not cutting the pain at all. I have a very high tolerance for pain but this pain was worse than anything I have ever had in my life and nothing helped. I had been sent to several Doctors and no one could diagnose the problem. I had also been thru a lot of vertigo therapy that would sometimes make matters a little better and sometimes make matters worse. I went to see several ENT Doctors as well as my Family Doctor I traveled to Florida to see a Doctor that had treated several cases of Ramsay Hunt Syndrome which is basically shingles but instead of being on the outside it attacks the cranial nerves on the inside of the head and what ever this was happening to me was attacking the nerve bundle at the left side of my head and the pain and pressure was unbearable to the point I laid in bed and cried for days and that was even with taking pain medicine. I had every symptom of Ramsay Hunt Syndrome but I also had a 7th nerve involvement which was not typical of RHS and that was kinda throwing the Doctor off he couldn't figure where the 7th nerve involvement was coming from. I have been to the Vestibular Clinic at the University of Virginia and also I regularly see a Neurologist. After over 8 months of going thru this I was finally put on medication for Ramsay Hunt Syndrome and also for Complicated Vestibular Migraine and the medicine has helped me tremendously but I am still suffering from the dizziness and I still have the pressure in my head but now it's not to the extreme that it is unbearable like it was before. I still am unable to work, and my bills just keep adding up and with no income coming in it has been such a hardship trying to get my medicine, fuel for running to all these long distance Doctor appointments, plus all the bills coming from Doctors and Hospitals and several things that my insurance has refused to pay for. My husband works out of town and he has had to take off some days from work to take me to appointments because I am to dizzy to drive and he has tried to pick up the bills that I normally pay and now a lot of my medicine that I needed to have we had to use credit cards to get and now we have all these additional bills coming in and no way to pay them all. I just recently had another flare up that was pretty severe and they increased my Ramsay Hunt medicine and that helped but I can only take the larger doses for several days then I have to go back to the smaller doses because it can cause Liver and Kidney damage. There is no timeline for recovery from this, I just have to take it one day at a time.
 
 
 
 
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