My videonystagmography...

Say that five times fast. A videonystagmography is a technology for testing inner ear and central motor functions, a process known as vestibular assessment. It involves the use of infrared goggles to trace eye movements during visual stimulation and positional changes. VNG can determine whether dizziness is caused by inner ear disease. In other worse f-ing torture for someone like me. For those of you who follow my blogs, you know I had an SAH in June, and you know whilst they were trekking around in my brain they found a tumor. The actual name for this new creature in my head is schwannoma. And no, I didn’t make that word up. Google it. Over the last couple of years my motion sickness which they are now calling motion intolerance, has gotten significantly worse. Since the SAH it's gotten weird. Basically all my life if I'm in a car, train, plane, boat I barf. Over the past couple of years I have found I can be in a car for 5 minutes and barf. I can try paddle boarding and barf. I can watch a shaky movie and barf. By the way have I mentioned how much I HATE BARFING?! Since the SAH I got sick after a meditation class, realizing from the class a couple of days before that now I can’t lay flat in the Shavasana (corpse pose) position anymore. Then a couple of weeks ago I was having a gay old time harvesting grapes at a local vineyard and barfed. They only thing anyone can come up with is my head was at an odd angle while I was cutting the grapes. So - ya. I'm all out of whack. Anywhoo - after the yoga incident I went to see my primary doctor about this. I had planned on seeing him earlier this year about it but then my head exploded putting things on hold. So, now with this schwannoma in my head near or on my balance nerve in some canal that the neurologist kept referring to as auditory we thought - Hey! So did my dr. So he, being annoyed that the neuro guy didn’t follow up, promptly sent me to the House Ear Clinic. The House Ear Clinic folks tested my hearing, which I'm proud to report is awesome, and promptly set up this VNG test. When I read up on it my heart fell. Basically it was going to purposefully make me barf. Fantastic. Now, what some of you may not understand, is when my motion sickies/vertigo/whatever the fuck it is kicks in, I go downhill fast and am laid flat. It's not a quick woozy feeling and then goes away. I'm sick. I usually throw up and am down for a day or two because of it. I may consider myself a strong woman and quite tough at that, but that nausea kicks in and I'm done for. Once I found out what this test entailed, I re-scheduled for a Friday and kept the entire weekend free not sure how I was going to handle it. Plus I used up all my damn sick/vacation time when my head blew so I wanted to shoot for a weekend. This then gave me plenty of time to freak out. I was almost as nervous/anxious as I was when I had to get my 2nd angiogram. I had to not drink alcohol for 3 days prior and not drink coffee for 2 days prior. The alcohol was fine, but I didn’t realize how much I would miss coffee. I only have a large mug a day but that was enough to give me a nice headache on Thursday and feel like I was sleep walking. Friday morning arrived and I woke up in a cold sweat of fear. My little brother showed up early to pick me up (he volunteered to be my driver) and off we went. We arrived early and my anxiety was kicking into high gear. A nice looking doctor popped his head out and called in an old lady. I turned to Shane mortified saying "The cute doctor is going to see me puke?!" He laughed. A larger less attractive doctor called in another old lady. Ok, maybe I'll get someone else. Oh no. Promptly at 9am the cuter doctor called me in. I swear this was the universe playing a joke. We sat down and chatted about what’s been going on with me. I told him how anxious I was about this whole thing and he tried his best to calm me down. We started with some simple watching his finger sort of thing. And then he said "Your eyes are the same color as your shirt! Or you shirt is the same color as your eyes, whichever!" and he blushed. Was he flirting? I doubt it. We continued. He then had me to some balance moves. Then came the goggles. Check these babies out:

I looked so hot. They were uncomfortable as hell, which he did warn me about. Apparently these things track my eye movements when I'm being tortured. I then had to look at this bar and follow the red dot in a bunch of different ways. No big. Then he asked me to shake my head back and forth and open my eyes wide afterwards. Ugh. Then we were done with the 1st part. 2nd he had me climb on the table and he put me in random positions such as lay me down with my head tilted to the right and dangling over the table. Believe it or not I did just fine with all of these. Now came the scary 3rd part. He places a balloon in my right ear and it fills with cold water. As it fills up my world starts to spin. I start breathing heavy and he's trying to calm me down. It then deflates and the spinning gets worse. He's asking me girls names that start with A, B, C, trying to keep my mind focused. It was absolutely awful. After about 4 minutes of "rest" I do actually start to feel ok and the spinning stops. Once I recover I actually feel pretty optimistic that I may actually be able to handle this. He asks how I'm feeling and I tell him ok. We proceed to the left ear. As soon as it starts I can already tell this is worse. The spinning is worse and I start to feel horrible. We do boys names this time, but I'm having a harder time thinking. Although he said I was the first person to say Gerard as a boys name with a G. The balloon deflates and I'm spinning and spinning and this time I don’t recover. I now have hit that point I'm all too familiar with that means on the downfall into sick as hell. I tell him this. He says he's actually pretty confident that he has all the data he needs, and we don’t have to do the warm water portion. He says unless Dr. Wilkinson (The House Ear Clinic dude) feels strongly about it, which would mean I have to come back, he thinks we're good. He says everything looks normal which is good and bad. Good because normal is always good right? But bad because this means that the vestibular thingy is not what’s causing me to be sick. Hello another murky answer. But this also means that that little bastard tumor isn’t causing any blockage and that all the little sensory whatevers are traveling along just as they're supposed to be. He's now rambling on and on and I don’t hear what he's saying anymore because I feel like I'm going to vomit all over this man. He tells me I can lay there as long as I want, I think he actually feels really bad about making me so ill, but I tell him I have to get home because I know I'm going to get sick. So I hobble out of his office and he's following me out still rambling saying something about my insurance covering 100%. I wave a half ass goodbye without looking back and hobble out the door in search of my brother. As I walk to his truck, a lovely old lady stops me and asks if I'm ok. I know I looked a mess. Shane spots me and hops out of his truck and hands me a plastic bag as I climb in. Homeward bound. I crawl into bed and Shane gives me one of the anti-nausea pills from the hospital I still have and have been meaning to test out in a situation like this. I take it, glance at the clock, it's not quite noon and promptly pass out. I woke up later at 2:30pm to many lovely texts asking how it went, was I ok, sending love. As I sat up I realized I actually felt a tad bit better. Note to self - the anti-nausea pill will knock me the fuck out but helps somewhat. I wandered into the living room, ate a row of crackers and watched movies. When mom came home she made me my comfort food which I ate all of, but started to feel bad again. Head was pounding and nausea was returning so to bed I went at 7:30pm. I woke up this morning feeling better but still worn out, but the fact that I can write this blog means I'm on the mend. I have a follow up appointment with Dr. Wilkinson in November which I plan on bringing my father too so he can translate the medical jargon. We will look at my MRI with the schwannoma bright and shiny and discuss my options based on this VNG and MRI and whatever else. I hope hope hope that I have some clear answers that will put my mind and barfiness at ease. All I can say is this VNG test is just plain mean. I hope none of you ever have to go through something like this. But it's done, I'm on the mend and will hopefully be good as new by Monday! It's one of my favorite times of year with all the Halloweeny goodness and I want to enjoy it!