EnglishDoctors puzzled by woman’s dizziness and amplified body sounds
canada goose coats on sale ‘That’s it I’m done,” Rachel Miller proclaimed, the sting of the neurologist’s judgment fresh as she recounted the just concluded appointment to her husband. Whatever was wrong with her, Miller decided after that 2009 encounter, she was not willing to risk additional humiliation by seeing another doctor who might dismiss her problems as psychosomatic. canada goose coats on sale
The Baltimore marketing executive had spent the previous two years trying to figure out what was causing her bizarre symptoms, some of which she knew made her sound delusional. Her eyes felt “weird,” although her vision was 20/20. Normal sounds seemed hugely amplified: at night when she lay in bed, her breathing and heartbeat were deafening. Water pounding on her back in canada goose deals the shower sounded like a roar. She was plagued by dizziness.
canada goose uk outlet “I had started to feel like a person in one of those stories where someone has been committed to a mental hospital by mistake or malice and Canada Goose online they desperately try to appear sane,” recalled Miller, now 53. She began to wonder if she really was crazy; numerous tests had ruled out a host of possible causes, including a brain tumor. Continuing to look for answers seemed futile, since all the doctors she had seen had failed to come up with anything conclusive. canada goose uk outlet
canada goose factory sale “My attitude was: If it’s something progressive like MS [multiple sclerosis] or ALS [amyotrophic lateral sclerosis], it’ll get bad enough that someone will eventually figure it out.” canada goose factory sale
Canada Goose Online Figuring it out would take nearly three more years and was partly the result of an oddity that Miller mentioned canada goose clearance to another neurologist, after she lifted her moratorium on seeing doctors. Canada Goose Online
canada goose black friday canada goose outlet sale By 2010, Rachel Miller was wondering if she would ever be able to go fishing again: She couldn’t take the rocking motion of the boat. (Bob Miller) canada goose black friday sale
“It was very lonely sometimes,” she said of the five years she spent contending with feeling off kilter even though she appeared to be perfectly normal. “I just gritted my teeth” and tried to carry on.
buy canada goose jacket cheap Miller vividly remembers the unusually hot spring day in 2007 when her problems began. While working in the garden, she bent over and a sudden wave of nauseating vertigo knocked her to her knees. Too dizzy to walk, she crawled into the house and spent the rest of the day in the air conditioning lying still. buy canada goose jacket cheap
Canada Goose online Miller at first blamed the heat and her lack of breakfast. Several buy canada goose jacket hours later, after the spinning subsided, she noticed that canadian goose jacket her head felt funny and her vision seemed off. Canada Goose online
“It’s hard to Canada Goose Outlet describe, but it was as though I was looking at the world through someone else’s eyes,” she recalled. “The world looked different.”
The dizziness did not disappear and was sometimes severe. “My brain didn’t seem to know where my feet were, and my head seemed disconnected from my body.”
cheap canada goose uk Her internist ordered a series of tests CT scans of her brain and later MRIs which found nothing. Over the next two years, she made the rounds of specialists ear, nose and throat doctors, neurologists and even a neuro ophthalmologist none of whom found anything noteworthy. An ENT thought that perhaps her deviated nasal septum and sinus polyps might be the cause. Miller underwent two sinus surgeries, but her symptoms remained undiminished. cheap canada goose uk
A second ENT decided the most likely cause was a vestibular migraine, a severe headache of which vertigo is a common feature. He prescribed nortryptyline, a tricyclic antidepressant sometimes used to treat migraines, which Miller took for a year without noticing any improvement.
canada goose clearance sale Other doctors focused on a concussion she cheap Canada Goose suffered in 2003 when she was struck by a car. But none of them could figure out what the connection between her head injury and her symptoms might be. canada goose clearance sale
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By 2009 just getting through a workday had become a major effort. Miller had canada goose trouble concentrating, and she worried that she was so wobbly her co workers might think she was drinking on the job. She tried not to leave her office; at times, she walked down the hall discreetly trailing her index finger along Canada Goose Parka the canada goose black friday sale wall in an effort to maintain a straight line. She was terrified to walk in the dark and had fallen several times because she didn’t know where her feet were.
Her vision was especially bothersome. Trained as an artist, Miller said she was “really, really aware of how I saw things” and they didn’t look right. Parallel lines looked especially off.
canadian goose jacket Miller’s hearing also had undergone a change. As she lay in bed, her heartbeat and breathing sounded overly loud but oddly muffled, as though she was listening to both underwater. At the same time, her ability to hear out of her right ear had diminished. canadian goose jacket
In 2009, Miller consulted a neurologist who listened to her story and zeroed in on her training as an artist.
“You’re just like my wife,” Miller said he told her, “a very sensitive person.”
canada goose “Are you telling me that this is all in my head?” she asked him, already surmising that his answer would be yes. Miller said she found the doctor’s assessment devastating but not entirely surprising. Other doctors, at a loss for a diagnosis, had suggested she try Prozac. She resolved to stop talking about the problem or seeing specialists. canada goose
Canada Goose Coats On Sale “I was lucky,” she said. “I had a husband who knew something was wrong and tried, however inadequately someone can, to be there.” Canada Goose Coats On Sale
An unusual symptom
In 2010, Miller felt her symptoms were getting worse. She wondered if she’d ever again be able to go fishing, canada goose coats a favorite pastime, at the cabin in rural Canada where her family vacationed; she couldn’t take the rocking motion of the boat. During a physical, the nurse practitioner in her internist’s office asked Miller if she’d ever gotten an explanation for her balance problems. Miller replied that she hadn’t; the nurse urged her to keep looking.
Canada Goose Jackets Miller resumed the search but decided she was done “mucking around with garden variety doctors.” She remembered that the patronizing neurologist she’d seen in 2009 told her he had studied under David Zee, a vertigo expert at Johns Hopkins. And her ENT had previously suggested she consult, a professor of otolaryngology at Hopkins. Consulting them sooner, Miller says,”would have saved me about two years.” Canada Goose Jackets
She called Zee’s office and, after filling out a detailed 16 page questionnaire and collecting her medical records, was given an appointment with the neurologist.
buy canada goose jacket “I was very belligerent when I saw him,” she said of the September 2011 appointment. She worried that Zee, an internationally prominent neurologist who directs the Vestibular/Eye Movement canada goose clearance sale Treatment Lab at Hopkins, might blow her off, too. buy canada goose jacket
Near the end of canada goose store her visit, Miller mentioned something she’d told her other doctors; she considered it significant, but none of them had seemed interested. “You’ll probably think this is silly,” she told canada goose coats on sale Zee, “but when I stick my finger https://www.winterdownparkas.com in my right ear to scratch it and Canada Goose sale pull the finger out, I go blind for a second and lose my balance.”.