The Crud

On By WendyIn Chronic Illness, Cochlear Implant, Meniere's Disease

sick cartoon

The chronically ill get sick, just like everyone else.

I have the crud.  A sniffling, sneezing, aching, coughing, stuffy-head, fever, so I can’t rest cold, and unfortunately NyQuil doen’t help.

When you have Meniere’s disease you can get really sick when there is too much fluid in your head.  I haven’t talked to anyone who has Meniere’s Disease who doesn’t have more symptoms when they have a stuffy head.  No one knows what causes the symptoms of Meniere’s one main theory is that they result from increased pressure of an abnormally large amount of endolymph (fluid) in the inner ear.  Doctor’s usually put us on a low sodium diet and often diuretics to reduce the fluid in our ears.  When anyone has a cold they have a lot of fluid building up in their head; their nose gets all stuffy, and their ears can feel full: put that in a person with Meniere’s and you have one wonky person.  Right now, I’m one of those people.

Nothing I can take can make all that fluid go away. Yes, I can take a few things to help “dry things up”. but I’m sure all of you have had a cold, and you know that no matter what you take you will feel a bit stuffy and all full in the head.

My symptoms are exacerbated.

  • My tinnitus is going crazy, as I’ve said to Stuart: “Really? You Can’t Hear That??” The noise will be so loud at times I could swear my body is vibrating with it.  Other times, the pitch is so high I will suddenly buckle over from the pain.
  • The fullness in my ears feels like there is wet cotton in there and it just keeps absorbing more and more fluid, soon it will be dripping out my ears I’m sure.  (this won’t happen unless I get a bad ear infection, it just feels like it.)
  • I feel much more dizzy and lightheaded than normal.
  • My hearing is just wrong.  I have cochlear implants, I don’t hear like other people. “Cochlear implants (CI’s) bypass damaged portions of the ear and directly stimulate the auditory nerve. Signals generated by the implant are sent by way of the auditory nerve to the brain, which recognizes the signals as sound.” NIH Publication No. 11-4798  You wouldn’t think that I would have the same problems as other people with Meniere’s concerning hearing fluctuation and sound sensitivity, but I do.  It is much worse when I have the cold, but it happens pretty much every evening, I’ll suddenly have my hearing so all funky; I can’t understand Stuart and often things sound so loud that I have to remove my CI’s.  Thankfully, I can take them off and just hear nothing, except the tinnitus that doesn’t go way, but hearing nothing can cause other problems.  When I take off my CI’s and stop hearing anything, I can get dizzier, and feel really confused.  I don’t mean I’m confused because I can’t hear, I have severe brain fog.  If I’m reading, I often can’t comprehend what I just read.  I think this is because I notice the tinnitus so much more and it is bombarding my system.  When I’m not sick, sometimes taking my CI’s off is often a pleasant sensation, to just relax in total quiet (as long as my tinnitus is being good and staying low).  I do this every day when I meditate.
  • My oscillopcia is worse. (Oscillopsica is a visual disturbance in which objects in the visual field appear to oscillate. The severity of the effect may range from a mild blurring to rapid and periodic jumping.) It can be incapacitating, luckily mine just causes me to see things weird sometimes.  I often see things as if there is this funky shadow surrounding them, like they are slightly vibrating but I can’t really see the vibration I can only see the after image after.  It’s hard to explain.  On a good day, I don’t have this, or barely have it.  Today, I’ve had to stop writing this post many times because I am having a hard time focusing. (note, not everyone with Meniere’s has oscillopcia)
  • I think everyone has a headache when they have a cold, I don’t know if mine is worse than it used be before I got Meniere’s or not, that was a long time ago.  I know it’s worse than my persistent daily headache.  I’m at a 6 or 7 on the 0 – 10 scale all the time right now.

So far I haven’t had a full blown vertigo attack.  I keep feeling like it’s coming, but it hasn’t.  I’ve been having so many good days recently maybe this cold won’t set it off.  I do constantly feel like I’m on a boat and a bit car sick, but the full rotational vertigo has not come around.

Having a cold and Meniere’s at the same time can be challenging.

If you have Meniere’s and you feel cruddy because you have the crud, you aren’t alone.  Know that it gets better.

If you don’t have Meniere’s, now you know a bit about what people with Meniere’s go through when we have a cold. Some people have more symptoms than I listed, some people have less, but normally people with Meniere’s have their symptoms increase when they have a cold.

Today I have the crud….it just is.

27 thoughts on “The Crud”

    1. Everything does…pass I mean. The bad, the good…the key is to be ok if it’s good or bad.
      My crud (the term my doctor affectionately calls a bad cold) just is.
      I’m glad you like my drawing, thank you.

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    1. Thanks Lindsay.
      I hope you are doing as well as possible.
      Need an update from you I think, unless I missed it.
      I will have to check and see.
      You get married and forget all about blogging. 😉

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  4. As a fellow tinnitus sufferer, I just can’t believe that it’s still there, even after you take out your CI. To me, that just defies logic. Have you ever wondered if tinnitus is a made-up medical condition, in an attempt to disguise the fact that aliens are trying to contact us? 🙂

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    1. I’m very glad I didn’t have water in my mouth when I read this or my tablet would be all wet!
      When I read aliens wanting to talk to us….I cracked up! I’ve been in a touchy mood today, so that hit a good spot.
      Ya know, it could be that aliens are trying to make contact. They have my attention!
      ….Message is garbled please send interpreter.

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      1. Just so you know, I don’t have the option to like comments on your blog, so here’s your like. 🙂

        A long time ago, I tried to make music from the ringing in my ears, but as you might guess, I was unsuccessful. I don’t know any songs that sound like tinnitus. The closest comparison I have is that it sounds like the old emergency broadcast signal. Of course, if it’s alien music, that could be why it’s so aggravating. 🙂

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          1. You know I can’t like anyone’s comments. Thinking about caging themes. Not sure if I got the like yet, I’m here before I looked at my email.
            Oh my goodness, I will get these very loud sounds that sound like the Emergency Broadcast Signal….but the TV is on full blast. I always describe it like that.
            I did a post a long time ago, when I could still hear, a friend who works with audio recorded what I heard. It changes, but it’s a sample.
            So here’s my alien music https://picnicwithants.com/2012/04/11/my-sounds-of-silence-hawmc-day-11/
            Eh….I’m on my tablet I don’t know how to make that a link.
            Hope you get it.

            I hope our aliens are from the same planet, must be since we both hear the EBS…ha.

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          2. Did I know you can’t like anyone’s comments? Well, if I did, I guess I forgot. If we’ve had this conversation before, then maybe I’ve already told you I was having trouble liking comments on your blog… So, now I’m not only old, I’m becoming redundant. 🙂

            Your Emergency Broadcast Signal doesn’t sound like mine. Yours sounds like a hospital machine or something… like a heart and lung machine. Mine has a really high pitch, like somebody stuck tuning forks in my ears. Probably aliens, just trying to communicate. I’m just glad I haven’t been anally probed… at least, not to my knowledge. 🙂

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            1. No I never told you…I wrote that weird. What I meant, you know what..
              Golly I’m so confusing sometimes.
              I did get your like. 😀

              That recording is old. I get the sharp sound you are describing now.
              It varies greatly.
              Sending different messages, i guess, they just can’t make me understand.

              Oh no, I have a scar in my belly button! Did they get in?
              Oh, wait, that’s from having my gall bladder removed…or is it??

              We are so silly.

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          3. See, I knew it! I also have a scar, allegedly from the removal of my gallbladder. And yet, it’s so odd, I don’t feel like I’ve lost an organ. On the one hand, I’d like to feel special because aliens are trying to communicate with me, but on the other hand, they should know by now that it doesn’t work. Ah, aliens and politicians, they just don’t know what the heck they’re doing, right? 🙂

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            1. Oh my goodness you are so right!
              Especially politicians, and this election.
              The rest of the world has to be laughing at us.
              I am surprised the aliens haven’t figured it out yet though, perhaps they simply don’t want to give up on us.
              We are the chosen. 😨

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  5. If tinnitus is alien broadcasts, try wrapping your head in tin foil — I have it from an alpha centurion that it works for him against Martians. Mine is tuned to talk radio/opera mostly these days — so it’s sinustinnitus, I guess.
    Sorry you got the cruds — hopefully not the “galloping cruds” which was a dread disease in my house as a child — according to my dad 🙂
    Feel better and tell Stuart he isn’t allowed to get sick.

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    1. Too late, Stuart says he’s a little sick, but I think his is allergies, he’s not like me and he always gets them this time of year.

      Hummm…tin foil, we can all try it and see if it works, if it works for one and not the others then I’d assume they are from a different planet.

      My old dr said he had a patient who always heard classical music. I wonder what that would be like. She has musical accompaniment everywhere. Well if it were Musak she would always tin she was shopping. Oh I Crack myself up!

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      1. I’ve probably told you I heard weird sounds (probably outgrowth of tinnitus and sinus ear noises: like opera or talk radio in the distance; snippets of conversations; bangs; clongs — all worse when a motor (like a fridge motor) is running. I liked it better when all I heard were footsteps and butterfly wings.

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  6. OMG! I LOVE the comments to this post! Agreed that it’s Aliens and I think you should get to name the planet they come from! Feel better soon and hugs to both you and Stuart. ❤

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  7. I think my aliens are from Not Pluto. The new planet they say they found that’s wayyyyyy out there. Found by the same guy who discovered Pluto isn’t a planet. So, it’s just, Not Pluto….ha.
    Thanks for the wishes, it’s just a cold, I’ve had worse colds.
    I just wanted to write about how symptoms change when we get sick.
    Hugs lady bug.

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  8. I hope the crud passes BOTH of you by post haste – on its way to Not Pluto. So sorry you have been feeling even worse than usual. Your descriptions of your symptoms are both an education and a lesson in empathy and strength through adversity. As always, I am in awe over how well you cope!

    xx,
    mgh
    (Madelyn Griffith-Haynie – ADDandSoMuchMore dot com)
    – ADD Coach Training Field founder; ADD Coaching co-founder –
    “It takes a village to educate a world!”

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    1. Looks like it passed over Stuart all together, he was just sneeze one day. It has officially upgraded to a very bad crud now. LOL
      This post was mainly to enlighten people how a simple virus can hit someone with a chronic illness.
      Hope you are well. Haven’t seen you post in a while now.
      xo

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  9. Hugs. We’ve been dealing with the crud here for a while now. Our version likes to be shared and shared and shared yet again. Where others say ” I feel your pain”, with me it’s “I feel your dizziness and brain fog and…”.

    Spring and warmer weather is on the way so next, how the change in weather is affecting us. blech! Some days, I feel like we’re some alien kid’s ant farm/science experiment.

    Where are the aliens that will make us healthy again? They never seem to visit. lol.

    Here’s to better days for us all.

    Love

    m

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