by Faith Burks

Created on: May 30, 2009

After living with migraines for the last sixteen years and Meniere's Disease for the past year, I certainly understand the frustrations of dealing with an invisible disability, doctor's think you are just a hypochondriac and even family members can be impatient. I am unable do a lot of things I used to do which is very frustrating, but I can still do quite a few things. My balance was so bad last summer that I was unable to ride my bike but this year I'm enjoying biking again. I've found that exercising regularly helps my symptoms. I'm treating my Meniere's with diet and a diuretic and I haven't had any bouts of vertigo for about a month, knock on wood. My diet is extremely low in sodiumt; 1500mg or less each day, no caffeine and no alcohol, which isn't a hardship since I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times I've had a drink in the last two years. But not caffeine! How in the world could I ever live without my caffeine. A cup of Swiss Mocha coffee in the morning and a diet Pepsi with lunch! I was such a caffeine addict that it was very hard to give it up and the withdrawal was hard for the first month, but now my body has learned to live without it. Although I have discovered that I can have an occasional glass of iced tea with no ill effects, I was very happy about that because in the summer I adore iced tea!

The vertigo and disequilibrium has been extremely debilitating. For about a month I was not allowed to drive and as a strong independent woman, having to depend on others for rides was detrimental to my confidence and my ability to take care of myself and the belief that I could take care of myself was shattered. For me the tinnitus and deafness has been even more unsettling. The vertigo came in infrequent episodes but the tinnitus is a constant. It disrupts my sleep, keeps me from enjoying movies and TV shows. I am very thankful for closed captioning and subtitling on DVDs otherwise I wouldn't be able to enjoy anything on TV, it is very frustrating to me when the closed captioning doesn't work or is flawed. For the longest time the reverberation in my ear was so bad that I couldn't even enjoy playing the piano, but I have discovered if my ear fullness is very bad or my tinnitus is loud, I can put an earplug in my ear and I'm still able to play the piano.

When my symptoms first began I'd been planning on moving to another state, a place I've always wanted to live, but until I had my symptoms under

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