The last 6 years of my life had been lost. I had been crushed daily by vestibular migraines for years at a time. Always dizzy with the worst attacks felling almost like what I think a seizure would feel like. Waves of what seemed like electrical overload would routinely drop me to the floor. 10 out of 10 attacks weekly at minimum.
I went through the regimen of doctors in an order that made sense: general ENTs and neuros and then migraine or balance focused specialists in those fields. I ruled out other things too like TMJ and food triggers like histamine and fermented foods and on and on. I had to wait for tests to rule out brain tumors and MS and cancer everything in between. Nothing ever tried turned it off and I could be destroyed by another attack at any minute.
I continued to decline each year. I started to get what felt like heart palpitations followed by attacks. This led me to wearing a heart monitor for a week.
Turns out I had 177 essentially extra beats that week. This was deemed normal to my relief, but what was not normal was my heart rate during sleep. In fact, some nights my heart rate was in the 20-30 bpm range for stretches.
A sleep study was recommended and of course I had obstructive sleep apnea. Among the maybe dozen doctors I saw over the years, this never came up.
i could tell after the first night on the ”scuba mask” as I call it, that something was different right away. I was barely dizzy and the ringing in my ears was way down. I always felt like I was buzzing but not this morning.
After night three, I was essentially cured but of course I didn’t know that at the time. It’s been a year now and I am totally in the clear. My life was essentially over and I have been given a reprieve. I got 10 years younger in 3 nights.
I’m sure some would think I’m ignorant for not thinking of this or recognizing this could apply to me in six years, but it just didn’t happen. I wrote this to encourage others that you can maybe find a way to escape, and to strongly encourage anyone with chronic migraines to consider this as a possible root cause of your problem if you have not ruled it out. It saved my life!
I wish everyone here the best and I appreciate all the ideas over the years. I must say its very nice to not have to read the posts anymore hoping for a magic bullet.
Cheers to everyone being migraine free at some point. Bud over and out.