Stahlke Adoption

Health Issues

I've noticed that older people talk about their health a lot (or lack there-of). Feel free to skip this blog post, because I'm showing my age!

About ten years ago, I tripped on a step and fell on my face, hitting another step very hard. Fortunately, the second step missed my eye, or I would have broken the eye socket bones, or worse. The main result was terrible bruising, and I resembled a raccoon for several weeks.

About a year later, we adopted five of our children, and I've been tired ever since. Everyone always assumed it was just overwork, but about two years ago I went through a sleep study and discovered that I'm on the verge of having sleep apnea. An exam by an ENT determined that my 2004 fall had broken my septum, greatly reducing my breathing ability.

For the next two years, I took decongestants every night, which helped me sleep much better. But the permanent fix recommended by the ENT was surgery to straighten the septum and allow normal breathing. With the busyness of our lives, elective surgery took a back seat for a very long time.

In the meantime, during the last two years, I've continued to fall about once a month. Not a good thing! The falls are related to issues with my back which cause nerve damage in my foot. When you don't lift your foot high enough, it catches on things and down you go! Then the falls start compounding on themselves. In one of them, I hit my head and had a mild concussion, which has caused mild vertigo for several months. The ensuing lack of balance leads to more falls.

Side effects from the constant use of decongestants finally pushed me to have the nose surgery last August. It was unpleasant, but not painful, and I have been sleeping much, much better. In addition, starting on the day of my surgery, the vertigo was gone! I could hardly wait for the surgical followup with the ENT to ask him about the vertigo. You should have seen him grin when I explained about my concussion and vertigo, of which he was previously unaware.

My concussion had caused Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV), in which tiny calcium stones in the inner ear are not in the correct place. He explained that during my nose surgery, he has to lower my head quite a bit (after the anesthesia takes effect, luckily). The position of the head for the surgery is the same as a procedure he does to fix vertigo (Epley procedure or Semont maneuver).

Without even knowing it, the doctor had cured my vertigo. I think it made his day!

posted by Stahlkes @ 11:55 AM