It’s Been A Minute.

Ok, more like a year.

It’s interesting that my last post nearly a year ago is about how my brain fog makes it difficult to function. That pretty much sums up why I haven’t written anything in a year.

It’s been a time, and I couldn’t possibly tell you about all of it. Let’s just say 2019 was not my best year, and 2020 got off to a rough start. The headline is two significant things hapened:

First, we went on a cruise in January 2019, and it left me with a ridiculous condition called Mal DeBarkment Syndrome (MDDS). It’s as heinous as it sounds. Mal DeBarkment Syndrome basically means your brain doesn’t adapt to being on land after adapting to being at sea. The result is you feel seasick on land. 24/7. It’s incurable and can be extremely debilitating.

For the first two months I had MDDS, I was so nauseated I literally could not move from a chair, and only got up to use the bathroom or get food or go to bed in the evening. Yes, you read that correctly. Two months in a chair.

We found a treatment program at Mt. Sinai hospital in New York City, and I had a week of treatment there in late February 2019. The treatment helped but did not cure my MDDS and I had to return for treatment again in the summer.

In the course of being diagnosed with MDDS, it was discovered I have permanent nerve damage in my left ear, which likely made me more susceptible to MDDS. These are actually two different problems. Each with their own treatment plans. The MDDS causes nausea and makes me feel unbalanced as if I was on a boat. The nerve damage causes nausea of varying degrees of severity.

As of now, the MDDS is under control, and I am currently undergoing Vestibular Therapy (PT for the brain) for the nerve damage. The vestibular therapy helps, but it’s not a cure. I have periods where I feel just fine, and periods where I am debilitated by nausea. Generally, I’m able to string together three to four weeks of feeling well before suffering a bout of nausea that can last hours, days or weeks. I have been living with this uncertainty since January of 2019, and it’s likely to continue indefinitely. I’m learning to make hay when the sun shines, and rest when it doesn’t.

These vestibular issues have nothing to do with my regularly scheduled problems. And in some ways, they make me appreciate my regular problems, as they generally easier to power through than intense nausea and instability.

Speaking of my regularly scheduled problems, I have news on that front. In summer of 2019 I was diagnosed with toxic mold illness, also called Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome. THIS IS BIG NEWS. My doctor believes I have been suffering from untreated mold for years and believes it’s the reason I have not been able to regain my health in spite of so much effort. I hope he’s right.

I started treatment for mold last summer, and have had great difficulty tolerating the medication, so it’s going to be slow going. It’s extremely common for patients with mold illness to be exquisitely sensitive to medication, so I am not alone on that front.

My mold story is long and complicated and I will get to that in more detail in future posts.

For now, I just wanted to try and get back on the horse. Between the nausea and the mold treatment making me very sick I just haven’t had the will or ability to write much of anything.

But here we go. I’ve taken the first step, and I’m hoping I will have the energy and motivation to continue.