Why Physical Therapy Doesn't Work for Nerve Damage

 My problem is a neurogenic problem (nerve damage) and not a mechanical problem (loose crystals in the ear).

Forcing me to move my head is basically torturing me as it causes my nerves to fire and misfire more.  If I'm still dizzy after my nerves heal, then physical therapy for repositioning ear crystals will help.  However, for right now, physical therapy is torture.  I have to move around enough as it is and that is difficult, but I have to do things and make sure to get fresh air.  I want to be able to go out and do things so I'm not always locked up alone, obviously.  I also have to take care of some things.  So, I choose to move around at times. But,  I choose to do this, so it is my decision and I can decide how I want to move rather than being told how I need to move my head.

 

I used Google's Gemini Advanced to get this table. (and it took me enough time of editing HTML to get it to appear right on this page . . . lots of checks, but that's besides the point).

 

The Crucial Distinction: Nerve vs. Crystal Problem
Condition	My Injury	What They Are Trying to Treat
The Cause	The Vestibulocochlear Nerve (CN VIII) itself, which connects the ear to the brain, is damaged, irritated, or misfiring due to the electrical trauma.	Otolith Displacement (Crystals): Tiny calcium carbonate crystals (otoconia) get knocked out of the utricle and float into the semi-circular canals.
The Result	The nerve is sending continuous, faulty, chaotic signals (the electrical tingling, swaying, bouncing) to the brain, regardless of where the crystals are. The signal itself is corrupted.	The brain is getting correct signals, but the fluid movement in the canal is disturbed by the floating crystals.
VRT Success Rate	Low/Harmful: Head and eye movements will only increase the firing of the already damaged, hypersensitive nerve, often worsening the dizziness and pain.	High: Specific maneuvers (like the Epley or Semont) physically move the crystals back to their proper place, fixing the mechanical problem.

Telling me to move my head to fix my nerves is just like when I was told to move my shoulder when diagnosed with a rotator cuff injury when I really had a broken collar bone.  Being diagnosed with the wrong thing and treated for the wrong thing causes damage, not cure.  So, physical therapy for a mechanical problem makes the nerve problem worse.

If I have problems with balance after my nerves heal, then I'll go to physical therapy for that, but for right now, physical therapy is not the answer.  

Mom's Discharged . . . but No Diagnosis :(

Valerie is now at home.  I just got home. Briana and I needed a break from all the stress, so we stayed the night in a local hotel.  Unfortunately, they (either hospital or the doctors) have not come up with any diagnosis and she is still very bad.  She goes into these "episodes" where she has no idea what she does and other times she does things and remembers part of them, but not much of them at all.  Like, now, just when we got home, Briana was in the back yard and our mom opened the door.  All our mom did was yell "Niblet!" and then Briana told her that Niblet couldn't be out back because the dog door had been closed.  Her response was something like, "I know, but I just wanted to see if he was out back."  She is pretty hard to understand.  

They did a CT Scan and an EEG, but the neurologist saw nothing.  

She needs care, but the hospital discharged her on a Friday night and only gave us papers that said there were referrals for home health care and social services.  They didn't give us any numbers.

The moment we got her home, she fell when she got out of the car!  She said she needed to use the bathroom which was an improvement over the general situation.  When she fell, I told her to crawl up the stairs, into the house, and to the bathroom.  Briana was going in afterwards and our mom was on the floor writhing around like a fish.

My mom is much heavier than me and much taller than Briana.  Then, with my scoliosis and Briana's scoliosis and other problems resulting from her surgery to make it better, we can't take our mom falling on us like she does.  It's been happening every day.  

My back and my legs hurt so much right now and Briana's ankle hurts - and this is all from our mom falling and not helping to get herself up off the ground.

Yes, she has been declining rapidly.  There used to be a few times these weird "episodes" happened, but it wasn't much.  However, they've increased in frequency.  We need to get help to switch our rooms, too.  There's lots of heavy furniture that we can't move on our own.  The house is also a mess and this is mostly because of our mom, now.  She thinks she is "cleaning" when she throws things around.  Briana and I worked so hard to get rooms clean before, and our work is now seems like useless.  Sure, sometimes Briana made and makes it difficult, but she KNOWS that!  Her making it difficult does not help, but it helps that she understands what happens.  Our mom doesn't seem to understand it at all.

Z is for Zonk

Last night, I eventually and finally got to zonk out so I was not so overwhelmingly tired and stressed.  I got to sleep and relax and cuddle with Woofles.  He slept with me all night and he's been wanting to cuddle or be near me when I am home which is very cute.

Zonking was good for me with all of this stress.

I've been so stressed with my mother. She says that her health is not bad, but it has been getting worse and worse, and worse.

I know that talking about her urinary incontinence and fecal incontinence may not seem like giving her dignity, but she can't take care of herself with it.  Briana and I have had to clean up after her so much that it's become our burden and she doesn't care one bit.

A huge problem is that she'll have these accidents in public and then she'll just turn to us and say, "I had an accident."  We'll have to bring her home and then she'll go in the bathroom (after falling all over and making huge messes in places) and then make a mess in the bathroom and be uncooperative about letting anybody help her get clean.

Briana and I have tried and it never works.  She has a fit when we try to help her.  She insists that she is okay.  We've learned that she's not.

I'm concerned that some of this has to do with her switching to oxybutynin from the Detrol L.A.  She was having problems before that, too.  However, I think it has gotten worse since she did that.  She won't admit it, though.

I'm also concerned about the long term effects of the Paroxetine (Paxil) and the doctor just keep increasing the does at her insistence because she is getting depressed.

I'd honestly like to see how she is off of all these medications that she is taking.  If she's only depressed but she can actually function, I'd rather see her be depressed and functioning because then we'd at least know that the medications are the problem and it's not more serious than that.

However, I don't know if that's the case because of her orthostatic blood pressure and how many times she has hit her head.

People say that it takes a long time to get off of Paxil, too.

Anyway, I hope I can get more nights sleep like that because I really need sleep.  Zonking feels great.

I also thought of writing Z is for Zeus.  That's what the vet office was first calling Woofles before I adopted him.  However, he is definitely not a Zeus and is definitely a Woofles!

I need help switching my room with my mom's room.  It would be great to have help to do this while she is in the hospital so that she is not in the way of the work.  She's ALWAYS in the way of work being done in the house.  She doesn't help at all.

She won't admit it, but she is a hoarder.  She doens't throw out any of her trash!  Instead, she throws it on the ground.  She throws her dirty clothes on the ground.  She then wears the dirty clothes for days afterwards!

I need more nights of zonking.  I need to have times when I can just sleep and zonk out so peacefully.  However, I also need to work and write articles to make money.

Now that I'm at the end of the alphabet challenge, I need other blogging ideas to keep me writing!

No Real Diagnosis

All we know so far is that our mom has orthostatic blood pressure.  Sometimes I wonder what would happen if they took her off all the medicines that she takes.  She only has four, but none of them are for actually keeping her alive.  She might be depressed and weepy and have more urinary incontinence and be dizzy, but I wonder if that would stop the fecal incontinence and not even feeling that she's gone to the bathroom on herself.

She says she doesn't want to be a burden for us.  However, then she starts whining and making us feel guilty.  I wish somebody could just take me for a day and give me a break from everything.

Briana is trying to be good, but the thing is that she KNOWS she needs to work on the things that I have to do.  I've just had to drill it into her mind over the days, weeks, months, and years.

Here's more information:

My mom is currently at Christus St. Patrick Hospital. She is in room 4143. Briana and I cannot keep going up to the hospital every day and we cannot keep calling her all the time. I do need to work and I need to be able to take care of our dogs and the house.

If anybody that is in Lake Charles can visit her, that is definitely appreciated. Then, if anybody ANYWHERE can call her to talk to her (all she does is say the same things over and over to us), it would be appreciated as she "doesn't have friends" and she tries to make me (and Briana) feel guilty about that. 

Call St. Pat's at             337-436-2511       and then ask for room 4143. That's her phone to her room and you should be able to contact her. Yes, she is always that hard to understand.
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Then there's all this:

Also, prayers are appreciated! She would never tell the health professionals the truth. She still doesn't tell them the truth. We need to know what is behind this "passing out" or "fainting" or "seizures" and all the falls and the slurred speech and sometimes feeling like one whole side is paralyzed. Then, also, what is going on with her not being able to feel that she needs to go to the bathroom. She has no idea when she needs to go #1 or #2. The not knowing when she needs to go to the bathroom constantly happens in the house and she says it doesn't, but it does. She wears the off-brand depends and it started only for a few accidents and now she says she can't feel the urge to go at all. She can't even feel when she HAS gone to the bathroom in her pants.

She gets up and it is very disgusting and she trails it through the house wherever she walks. Then, she makes a huge mess in the bathroom (it looks like four or five monkeys have been throwing poop around in the place) and she claims that she tried to clean the bathroom, but she hasn't tried at all. Briana and I always end up cleaning the toilet and the walls and the floor and anything else that happens to be in the bathroom.
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She tries to make me feel guilty for having friends. She tries to make me feel guilty for wanting to find somebody to date. She tries to make me feel guilty for wanting to go back to school.

She has these health problems. She lies to the health professionals. She fights off the EMTs if we call them. Thankfully this last time she didn't do that. However, that was a rare case and we were so relieved that she didn't fight them. She complains about not having friends, but she is the only one to blame for that. Years ago, she stopped going out and stopped talking to people. Then, when she did know people, she stopped calling them!

She even met one gal and talked to her all evening while Briana and I brought a dog house for Toggle to our house in trips. She told the gal that she might call her again. She never called the gal. It's not like she didn't have a telephone. She had her cell phone at that time. She just never called.

Is There a Dcotor in the House, er Internet?

I was going to try to write article today, but that didn't happen.

My grandpa tends to come by most days and see how things are going.  For awhile, even when my mom was getting bad, they were okay.  I could handle what was happening and just make sure she didn't do much.

However, in the past year, things have not been good.  She has seemed to decline rapidly in the past two to three months.

She goes to the ER, to our GP, to a neurologist (a pretty bad one as we don't like him and cant understand him and his ratings are also the lowest of all neurologists in Lake Charles!)

The only thing that these doctors have been able to tell us is that she has depression, low blood pressure, Asperger's, and neurological degeneration.  She also often has a bladder infection or a UTI (or are they one in the same?).

Now, it is no doubt that her low blood pressure doesn't help her keep her balance.  However, years age when my Daddy was alive, she tended to drink.  She would get drunk and then she'd fall down.  So, her falling mostly started when she got drunk and it later turned into all the time even when she was sober.  I can remember her falling a few times when my Daddy was alive, but nothing like she does now.

She has problems that they will not address.  The one thing that was addressed is what my sister and I always tell her.  She needs to exercise to keep her leg muscles strong as if she does not, her muscles will atrophy.

She has these "seizures."  I don't know what to call them, but that's what they seem to be.  She is unresponsive to everything around her and she shakes.  These seem to happen when she is sitting.

She falls and she has hit her head many times when she has fallen.  Of course, we care about her and the doctors have looked and they don't find anything.

She goes into these "episodes," where she doesn't really know what she is doing.  She will often spend money on things that are not needed.  She'll go out to get food from somewhere. (We didn't know that's what was happening until later).   She'll do things (like unplugging the phone or trying to talk to her dog) that she won't remember.   I've said that it is kind of like Sybil, if you've ever read that book.  However, when she's in one of these "episodes," it's not like another personality that will remember what happened.  It's just gone from her memory.

Every now and then she'll remember a little bit of something she did during one of these "episodes," but it'll be just a bit of stuff, and then if you ask her about it more, she'll change the subject.  It may be related to the topic, or it may just go to her saying, "While I'm thinking of it . . ."

Briana and I can't take care of her like she needs.  She is taller than Briana. She is heavier than me.  She fights and argues.  If we try to help her, she falls on top of us.

However, she doesn't wash up properly.  That's one of the hardest challenges.  How can we get our mom to showers and wash herself properly?  I keep telling her to let Briana help, but she doesn't let Briana help.  She says that she is capable of taking care of herself.

However, today, when she was in the ER at very first, they put a catheter in to get a urine sample.  Before that, though they had to take down her pants and her off brand depends underwear.  Then, they had to clean her vagina because feces was all over it!  Briana and I had no idea that she had a huge accident.   She didn't tell us about this.  She didn't get up out of the bed.

It would be nice to find some hospice care or a nursing home facility for her.

The thing is, we can't afford it!  My mom gets SSI.  My sister gets SSI.  I work.  We pay our bills with the three incomes.   We've been lucky at times that I've had money to make it so my mom's bank account is not overdrawn.

A nursing home is about $5,000 per month. If my mom lives 50 more years, that over three million dollars!  I don't know of any jobs that would even pay that much (plus probably $2,000 for the bills at home) even if they would hire me.

Do any doctors have any idea what could be happening?  We keep getting sent back home without a diagnosis.  How can she be having these problems and not having them show up on a CT scan or MRI?

We need some type of  diagnosis and we need some help.