Hello to all. Let me start by offering my sincerest compassion for what you all deal with. While I personally don't suffer from Meniere's, my grandmother does and I know all too well what she goes through. She has been suffering with it for some 40 years. She is 86 years young and she has good days and bad. Right now, mostly bad. The last month or so, she has suffered with several spells of dizziness and muffled hearing to the point she cannot understand what people are saying, in person or on the phone. She has been completely deaf in one ear for about 35 years or more, the other ear she has some hearing left in and wears a hearing aide. She can hear us when we talk but has great difficulty in understanding us. It comes and goes. She may go for days hardly able to understand anyone but then wakes up one morning with a clear head and can understand perfectly. Not only is the situation difficult for us, she's about at her wits' end. The fact that it comes and goes, among other clues, leads me to believe that she is having a severe allergy attack or reaction. She has always been allergic to a number of things so this would not be abnormal. She has always had seasonal allergies and has taken loratadine and Allegra and while they help with some of her seasonal allergies, haven't seemed to help much with this. She's supposed to have a VNG test soon, and I'm also wanting her to see an allergist and have allergy testing. I am wanting to know if any of you have had this congestion of the head that I have described and can share any remedy we could try to alleviate the congestion or whatever is causing this. Not only is it physically draining, she's beginning to show some depression. She's had 3 or 4 dizzy spells in the last week or less. At her age, this is one of the most worrisome issues as a fall could do much damage. She also says that prior to a dizzy spell, her head "feels funny". Now I'm sorry I can't elaborate more on that because I just don't know what she means, but maybe some of you do. I would appreciate ANY remedies, ideas, insight, or suggestions any of you may have. May God give you all strength to fight this and ultimately a CURE!!! Thank you for any help!
I would suggest that you read all that you can from the database here. Best of luck. Your grandmother is blessed to have you looking out for her
Hi JL, It is very kind of you to be researching on your grandmother's behalf. Her age and any other medical issues she may have would of course have to be taken into account when thinking of treatments. Her family dr is probably the best one to give the thumbs up or down for trying any of these things, along with your grandmother, of course. All i can tell you is what helped me. I suffered mainly from hearing loss, distortion etc. In the way of life style, eliminating caffeine helped a little. Now dont you go telling your grandmother she has to give up her coffee if she doesnt want to because it may not help her a bit and at 86, you have a right to hold on to simple pleasures if you want to. I mean that . The other two things that helped me a lot were antivirals like famvir and acyclovir. While these are generally well tolerated, they are not for people with kidney and liver problems, so the family dr needs to weigh in on that. The other thing that helped me was allergy testing and shots. While it made a big difference for me, it takes months of weekly shots to get to that point which of course involves transportation to apts etc. Antihistamines did not help me but they may help some. Remember, they have their own side effects and may not work well with other meds. That's my experience, but if you read on the board and go to the database board and read 'success stories' you may get some other ideas. Your grandmother is welcome on the board. We have folks in their 70's and 80's here as well as younger people. Good luck to your grandmother with this.
For the past year I’ve been suffering off and on with hearing loss and super loud tinnitus, so loud in fact I could not hear people talking to me. At the same time period I’ve also been taking loratadine. In September my hearing returned and my tinnitus subsided. I could play my guitar again, I can hear again! Recently I had sinus congestion, so I took loratadine for about a week, my tinnitus grew deafeningly louder, I can’t hear again, and I also had the most violent bout of vertigo I’ve ever had in the 30+ years I’ve had Menieries. I started to think what have I done differently to cause all this to come back on me. I’m taking a guess that it is loratadine. What I want to know is, is anyone experiencing any problems with loratadine?