I've been thinking a lot about my condition lately, as we all do. But I wanted a way to convey what in my mind happens to the inner ear when an attack happens, the aftermath of said attacks as well as the antiviral affects. So, here goes. Imagine your inner ear is your fingertips. Now imagine you are living a normal life, your ears hearing things all the time, your fingers feeling all of the textures and temperature differences in the world around you. And then you have a MM attack. Now imagine the first time you tried to sit down and learn how to play a guitar. After hours of pressing your tender, supple pads down on the steel strings they are left sore and achey for several days afterwards. Time goes by, and the callouses build up on your fingertips. Each time you play, the pain is less and less. Such is the case in the ear. Each time you have an attack, the suffering and damage occur, only to scar the inner ear a bit more so when the next attack comes, its not felt by the brain in the same way as it once was. Then enter the antiviral treatment. This is equivalent to someone trying to pry the guitar away from you as you play. As they are pulling, you fight to get just a few more notes in out of spite. Eventually the bigger, stronger person will win, but the calluses remain and will eventually fade away over time. Unfortunately, the longer you have been playing, the longer it will take for the fingers to heal, possibly not in entirety. Same goes for the MM affected ear. Not a perfect comparison, but when something comes to you in the shower you feel compelled to share.
I was trying to explain to a friend why I’m considering letting them kill my vestibular nerve. “If Menieres damages it, then how does damaging it further help?” Well imagine my brain is a pilot. A little bit of a wing gets chipped off so the pilot adjusts how he flies. Wobbly but cool. But the this just keeps happening little bits at a time. The poor pilot is constantly readjusting, can never rest on autopilot, is pretty anxious. So he can carry on but it’s a bumpy miserable unpredictable ride. Then someone comes along and says ok next flight, let’s just eliminate the weak edges of the wings. It’s not as good as flying with perfect wings But you’ll only have to adjust your flying ONCE. You’ll then know how to fly this poor shitty plane, and no more sudden wing chips.