My conversation with Dr. Gacek

Discussion in 'Your Living Room' started by angrychicken, Oct 25, 2013.

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  1. jimmykicker

    jimmykicker New Member

    ^^^^ This was me too. Anyone that says my improvement was due to placebo is a nimrod. As you, my audiograms prove the massive improvement and you can't fake that. This eliminated my distortion which was HUGE being a musician and mercifully the brain fog subsided too and I felt like I could think again.
     
  2. msprygada

    msprygada New Member

    My visit with my ENT today......Yah!

    Just got back from my appointment with ENT. This appointment was a follow up to an appointment I had with him on 1/22/2014. Here is my brain dump of my appointment today.

    Just a quick background on my MD symptoms that I had until the first visit (had a prior ENT but he retired). Noticed what I called Star Wars droid like voices in my left ear in 2006. But since it never bothered me I never looked up what MD was and did not have any other symptoms until Nov 2013 when I woke up with fullness in ears. A week later low roaring tinnitus of varying volume started, brain fog, irritation to loud noises, lightheadedness, but never any vertigo (thank God). In my first visit with my new ENT he agreed with the retired ENT that I had MD and told me what I could expect of how MD will progress and put me on the diuretic Triamterene to hopefully keep vertigo from never rearing its ugly head. Sound like the same MO everyone else got from their ENT’s.

    So I got the Triamterene script filled and the first day I took them I felt as I normally would with MD. But the second day I started to felt like crap, almost like the flu. I continued to feel like crap for 14 days before I decided to go off the Triamterene and then went back to feeling as good as I was before going on them. In the meantime I did a lot of searching on here and the web and found the AV treatment (and others like JOH and mega vitamin C regimen) and made another appointment to talk to the ENT about AV’s being a possible treatment of my MD.

    I read on here where someone said to not go in saying “You have to prescribe this to me!” but to go in with the scientific papers that show the possible links of MD and herpes and ask if we can pursue these as a possible treatment of my MD and not to make it sound like he is wrong and the Internet is right. I would have to say that this strategy worked perfectly for me.

    I first told him about my issues with the diuretic and then said I did a bunch of searching on the web (mostly on here) and found quite a bit of scientific research that was indicating that there is a link between MD and herpes in some patients and that AV’s have shown some promising results in the suppression of MD symptoms in a high percentage of MD patients. He indicated that he was not aware of the link between herpes and MD. I showed him the two papers with one of them being Dr. Gacek’s paper. He said that he knows of Dr. Gasek and said that Dr. Gasek is a well-respected doctor in the ENT community and that Dr. Gasek was definitely not a quack. So this paper carried some weight with my ENT.

    He read Dr. Gacek’s paper and listened to the other info I had from angrychicken’s posts (angrychicken’s symptom and mine are almost exactly the same) with his visit with Dr. Gacek and other info I found from other users on here that had a visit with Dr. Gacek and with users that have tried AV’s and had success.

    After reading Dr. Gacek’s paper, he told how this was just theory and not proved by blind studies and other medical testing and the like but he also indicated that some of those had their short comings as well. I thought he was going to say no, go away and then he looked up and said “Do you want to try this?” “Heck yeah” I said. He said that he is only going for this because the AV’s are basically harmless and that he was willing to let me try it and to have me report back on my results. He then thanked me for educating him on this information and was glad to know about this information and then set up an appointment for 3 months out to see how I am doing. He then was asking me “How much did you need to be on?” So I showed him where Dr. Gacek was prescribing 3000mg of Valaciclovir for 21 days, then 2000mg for another 21 days, and then 1000mg ongoing. So he calculated the script, typed it into his tablet (he only uses an electronic tablet to work on) and sent it off to my pharmacy.

    I could not thank him enough for letting me try this. I am very happy that he was open minded to allow me to pursue this and now I hope that this works and if it does, that some of his other MD patients might be able get some relief as well.

    I want to say thanks to all of you on here for all the valuable information that you provide on this forum about this nasty disease so that others (new and not so new) may learn and gain hope that there are other options out there besides taking a diuretic and learn to live with the disease.

    I will report back on my progress.

    Again, thank you all so very much.
     
  3. Vicki615

    Vicki615 New Member

    Wonderful!!! I hope and pray the AV works for you as it has for me and many others. Sounds like you have a wonderful ENT and so glad he respects Dr. Gacek and his paper.

    Please keep in mind many feel worse in the beginning as the virus tries to make its last stand, from I have heard it is the virus giving off nucleic acid which makes some people feel worse before better.

    Best of Luck!
    Do keep us posted.
     
  4. angrychicken

    angrychicken New Member

    msprygada,

    That is great news! It sounds like you found the perfect balance of being well prepared and having an open minded ENT. I sincerely hope that you have as much success with the AV treatment as I have. Please let us know how it goes!

    Best Regards,

    Colin
     

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