Gentamicin Injection Tomorrow!

Hope to soon say bye-bye to scenes like this!

That picture is hard to look at for long, isn’t it?  Can you imagine being in that picture for hours and not being able to look away?  That’s vertigo, my friends.  Or at least, one form of it.
Tomorrow, I’m heading in for my one time, low-dose gentamicin injection to hopefully put an end to this once and for all.  Things seem to be getting progressively worse as the weeks have worn on since I started antivirals about 5 weeks ago.  I think if I were to continue on without doing anything else, I would be back to having full-fledged vertigo attacks again.  I had a mild one the other night.  I woke up about 2am and had to go to the bathroom.  I sat up and the room was spinning, my head felt like it had lead weights attached to it, and I quickly fell back down on the bed.  I grabbed my ever present Valium and stayed still.  I was able to go back to sleep soon thereafter thankfully but when I woke up at 7am, the heavy-headed feeling was still present and when I walked, it felt like my head was leading me around.  Which means I staggered and swerved for a while.

Also, the other day I had gone to pick up my kids from school.  I was sitting in the car waiting for my daughter to be dismissed from Pre-K when I had a quick mini-spin.  I popped a Valium, sat in the car for another 5 minutes.  When I got out to walk across the parking lot, I know I was walking slow, swerving.  The other parents must’ve thought I was drunk or something.  Thankfully, the Valium kicked in quickly and by the time we were back in the car, I was feeling a lot better.

As for the gentamicin tomorrow, I’ve had to make so many contingency plans.  Someone else to pick up the kids.  Someone to come here and watch them.  Someone to be available in case I get really sick.  My husband wanted to make plans for next weekend.  I looked at him and said, you know we can’t do that, don’t you?  He said “I figured we’d just see how you’re doing.”  This infuriated me.  Like I can predict with any accuracy when I’ll get sick from this shot.  He was there when the doctor said the third or fourth day after is usually the worst.  He’s listened to me say that everyone’s recovery is different.  Some are horribly sick.  Some are just very unsteady for several days.  Once again, I was reminded that unless you live this disease, you just can’t get it.  No matter how much you try or how hard you want to, you just can’t.

I plan to post tomorrow, if I can, on how the actual gentamicin injection itself goes.  Then as I am able, I will post how I do afterwards.  Keeping a journal will help me gauge the progress.  I hope this injection does it because if it doesn’t, I don’t think my doctor is willing to do any more shots or do any more serious surgeries.  Keep your fingers crossed for me!