"Well, you can hear me" and other ignorant comments

Last Christmas my sister and family came to visit. When I walked in I was saying hello to EVERYONE in the room. Apparently she said "hi" to the deaf side of my head and I didn't hear her among the other chatter and noise. I went over to sit by her on the sofa and she yelled in my face, "I said HI!!!....are you deaf or something?!!!!" I just looked at her in disbelief and said...."yes, actually I am!...and have been for about 10 years now." She has known this for years and still doesn't "get it". :-\ ???

It's odd that she tells people about her "poor" sister with vertigo and Menieres, but in person she's not at all intuned to what I deal with. On the other hand we all have to accommodate her problems......which last weekend was an ingrown toenail.

 

Now THAT one sounds like my sister. She told me recently that she felt that our Mother willed herself a malignant brain tumor because she was not happy. So since I am obviously not happy, I have willed Menieres on myself! ??? ??? Oh right, my mother wanted to suffer with a brain tumor and I just LOVE having Vertigo, vomiting, loud noises in my ear and feeling like crap!

Understand now why I don't get along with her?

 

I hate when they say,,"WELL YOU ARE BLONDE SO THE DIZZY PART IS JUST NATURAL"!! mAKE ME PUKE!!

 

I've had that one too Peggoins and I'm a strawberry blonde!

 

OY!!! I guess there are as many comments as there are insensitive people. About the 'intoxication', I have started joking about it. When this first started and we didn't know what was wrong, my congregation would try to keep things light. When I would say that I felt intoxicated upon arrival for study, they would respond "Debbie's been into the Shabbat wine again." They are well meaning so now I joke about it myself. I do have a friend that I had the misfortune of being guilt-ed into Thanksgiving with, she has Bi-polar and Fibromyalgia and kept prodding me with questions and saying that I am depressed and have Fibro. Even my Psychologist says I am not depressed. OY!!!

 

Oh wow, I have to get in on this one also.... ;D

When I had my very first Meniere's attack several months ago, I had Full Blown Vertigo, Roaring Tinnitus, Nausea...very very severe and I had NO MEDS since my doctor didn't tell me what to do.

It was bedtime and my wife called the Cochlear Ear Specialist to ask him what to do because I was so sick and scared I thought I was going to die. He wouldn't listen to her and wanted to talk to me....(here I am in the bathroom hugging the toilet, I can't open my eyes, I can barely hear because of the roaring tinnitus, and I can't even tell which was is up or down). He asks me rudely "What is the problem!?!" He was upset because the phone call woke him up. I can barely get the words out of my mouth..."Dr....I am....so sick....could you.....call in some......medicine.....for me?" I say this in a barely audible voice I am so sick. What was his response?

"CAN'T THIS WAIT TILL IN THE MORNING!"

I'll never forget that! Needless to say, he is my EX-Doctor!!!

 

Wow, Chuck. That's amazing that an ear specialist could be that oblivious. What an idiot.

 

We just have to accept the fact that people are ignorant. Most don't mean to be insensitive or rude - they just don't get it. I think dlbach1 has hit on a good point. Sometimes we can make more headway in raising awareness (depending on the person, of course) by using humor. Not with the docs and stupid "health care providers" if you can call them that -- but with our friends and family who know us and what we go through. I have a t-shirt I made that says "Is it drunk in here, or is it just me?" People comment on it, and I get a chance to share a bit about MM in a way that is not rude back to them.

Depends on the person. Have to be "selective" on the use of humor. Don't want to trivialize the situation, but need to keep a gracious attitude in spite of their idiocy!

 

Yea, my favorite is, I have ringing in my ears too. I feel dizzy sometimes too. I could slap the s**t out of those people.. and most of them are friends of mine. They simply have no clue.....

 

A friend of mine said this to me last week.....and yes, she's a bit of a ditz..lol

"I get dizzy and have ringing in my ears too....It always seems to happen right after sex."

Ahhhhhh.....If only it could be that pleasant....

 

Maybe you've hit on something there, Eileen! Perhaps if we all stopped having sex we'd all be cured. And divorced!

 

Hmmm...tell them to quit that kinky stuff!!! ROFLMAO

 

Here's a beaut--happened to me today.

The software we work on makes a lot of noise when certain things happen. This is by design--it's to alert the operators. You can acknowledge that alarm on ANY computer and it stops on all machines but then the next time such an alarm occurs, the noise happens again. On the other hand the noise *can* be shut off completely--this has to be done on each individual machine though.

Some of the computers we run it on have a painfully (well, to ME at least) loud speaker in them. A couple of these are in the lab and I have been having to work in there this week. Well, this damned alarm goes off again and again, and of course the sound is turned on on someone else's machine and I keep having to shut the alarm off as I wince in pain. Some damnfool simply wouldn't shut the sound off on his machine, and after repeatedly having nails driven into my ear, I started getting upset. Finally, someone else just told me to go work out in the other area.

 

Ok, I'm new but I can't resist. I thought this was so funny I cried laughing so hard.......

When trying to explain to my younger brother just what Meniere's is, and commenting on being thankful I had learned sign language as a child due to my great-grandparents being deaf, he very seriously asked me.

"Are you going to learn braille before you need it?"

:

Silence from me then laughter, until I finally gasped out, "and why do I need braille?"

He finally realized.........

 

Geez!!! What fools we are daisy....we MUST be doing this to ourselves....you let me know how the no sex thing works out for ya...in the mean time, i'm not quite ready to give that up yet...ROFLMAO ;D 8)

 

I have Meniere's like symptoms(vertigo and fullness in the ears but no ringing or hearing loss) due to a deformed born in my right ear that I was born with. I guess it's the bone that feels like a bump behind your ears. It should be formed like the Letter "c". Mine is in a clump and not open according to exrays.

Anyway,I've dealt with vertigo all my life. As a child I had to leave school alot because of vertigo attacks. I had awful motion sickness so bus rides were a nightmare and I never got to enjoy rides at the carnival or fair. The doctors always checked for flu like illnesses because I would throw-up so much from the dizzness. Of course my white count would be fine and pretty soon the subject of me faking it came up. I gave up complaining and just dealt with it. If it happened during school I would lay my head on my desk as much as I could without the teacher yelling at me and run to the bathroom if I had to throw-up, come back and try to struggle through the day. Eventully ( and this took years) the vertigo attacks lessened to maybe once every month or couple months and I learned to live them. I never considered it could actually be a diease or something with a name because all those years doctors brushed me off.

Recently, however I started getting migraines which would trip my vertigo attacks and they stated becoming more frequent again. I had had enough and was going to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Thank god for the internet!!! I typed in dizziness(I didn't even know the word Vertigo)and vertigo came up and Meniere's came up and it was a perfect match. I went straight to my doctor who was shocked I had never told her about it. (I explained how after 35 years of no help I learned to live with it and it became part of what was "normal" for me) She sent me to the Minnesota Ear Head & Neck Clinic where I saw Dr. Michael Paparella who is one of the premeir doctors on Menier's diease in this country. He sent me to get my ears exrayed and low and behold I had my diagnosness. I wanted to cry tears of joy to finally have a name to what was wrong and some help.(diuretic and antivert) And also cry that the best possible help was there but no one took the time to really listen and believe me.

Sorry for the book. What I'm trying to say is; don't give up and drop those kind of doctor's fast. Doctors are human too. Not all are good people, much less doctors. Don't stop until you find a doctor willing to work with you.

 

Hi Raeshay and welcome!!

Thank you for your informative post. You sound like a strong person to me !

 

The ones I get are:

"Oh you will be fine, the dizziness is from Sinus infection", just rest and you will be better.

"Your doing good today, why does it change so much, can't you do anything about it".

"Just be glad you are alive"......."You survived Ovarian Cancer, you can get through this"

These comments are from some people who I am acquainted with.

I want to look at them and tell them "Shut the ....Up --- You have no CLUE what it is like!!

so IGNORANT is right!!