Migraine - Vestibular/Cochlear

A few weeks ago, with my condition lacking any improvement in the last two months, my ENT/Neurotologist said that we should explore treating my case as migraine. If that didn’t work we would be looking at surgery, probably a decompression.

We started on 10mg nortriptlyine every night. By the 3rd day, I felt like there was some improvement in my fullness and ringing. The fullness for me in the last two months has been unbearable, until it usually results in a vertigo attack and then I get a 24 hour reprieve from fullness.

Unfortunately, I stopped the nortriptlyine after the 3rd day sue to side effects. I am notoriously sensitive to medications, even on the lowest dosage. I felt like an absolute zombie on that drug and could not function. It was also disturbing my sleep, meaning I had little trouble getting to sleep, but it woke me in the middle of night at 2:30am every night.

A few days later I was back with my ENT and he started me on venflaxanine/Effexor. The good news is that after taking this med for 4-5 days, my symptoms improved dramatically. I had no fullness, tinnitus largely reduced/eliminated , and my hearing in low tones went from 65db to 40db, confirmed by my audiogram when I went for my first hearing aid. The bad news , as is always with me and medication , is that I did not tolerate this med either. I stuck it out for 8 days, but six of those days I slept maybe 45 minutes per night, if at all. During the day, I felt as if I was under the influence , heart racing, anxiety, chills.

I have an appointment with a neurologist on Tuesday, in hopes of continuing to treat this as migraine with a different medication. The CGRP medications that were approved a few years ago are all the craze nowadays. Hoping that one could have a similar effect with less side effects.

I was always asked if I get headaches, which I never really did. My ENT has always brought up migraine despite me not having any typical migraine symptoms. There has been tons of new research coming out of UCSF and UCI as well as Europe on meniere’s and migraine in the past few years. Vestibular and Cochlear migraine is now looked at on a continuum, with some patients having more vestibular issues and some having more cochlear. If you haven’t discussed with your practitioner migraine as a cause or contributor , or even a misdiagnosis, it is definitely worth exploring.

 

I do have a copy, thank you for the suggestion.

 

It made me feel like a complete zombie. Extreme tiredness/fatigue, brain fog.

I’m also notoriously sensitive to meds. I’m back on venlafaxine now at a really low dose which is having some success.

good luck to you , I hope it works.

 

Yes you can. VM and MD can sometimes be difficult to distinguish and also sometimes happen concurrently.