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[QUOTE]Originally posted by LOA: [QB] I had my bi-weekly Neuro appointment yesterday. It could have gone better. We talked about the visual disturbances. The doctor, who is one of the best in the state, said he's never ever had a patient complain of anything like what I'm describing outside of it being a medication side effect, specific to one particular medication, Topamax, which I've been off for months. He said usually when he takes patients off of that drug, once it's out of their system (about a week) the visual issues are gone and never manifest themselves again. In my case, they are not only still here, but getting worse. We discussed the possibility of another medication causing it. Not likely because we have changed all of my medication 3x over since the vision problems started. I asked if it was a possible opthomalgic issue, even though my opthomalgist ruled it out. He said no. It's definately related to my brain. We discussed the possiblity that somehow, even though we've changed all of my medications, we have put me back on medications by coincidence that keep causing the same side effect in me. This is highly unlikely and would be an amazing coincidence, but something to consider. We also discussed the possibility the Something Else is the cause. The vision problems may or may not be migraine disease related - they do not correlate with my headaches, but migraine disease is a neugological condition, and the headache is just a symptom of the disease, so it's hard to say. The problem is, he's never in all of his years of dealing with migrane patients, has someone like me. I'm having this problem off and on throughout the day now though, both when lying down and upright. Luckily, I haven't had the problem yet at work, but many times at home, several times while out with my boyfriend, and a few times while driving. Instead of double vision, I suddenly see 7 or 8 ghost images trailing behind everything I look at... it's very disorienting. Luckily, I can still sort of predict when it's going to happen, but I'm losing faith in that as the problem gets worse. The new plan of action: I have an MRI scheduled for next week to rule out a brain tumor/blood clot/aneurysm/stroke/etc. Most likely it will come back with normal results as I just had one 1.5 years ago, but we still have to check before we make some of the next steps... also, we are cutting ALL of my medications out. Starting this week with my sleeping pill. After that, it will be my preventatives, one by one. Eventually, I will be left with no medications. No allergy meds, birth control, migraine meds, nothing. As we're doing this, we're going to go slowly and one at a time to see at what point, if any, the visual problems stop or change. This is going to be hard on my body as my allergy meds and birth control are controlling other medical issues that I'd rather not deal with that ALSO contribute to my migrainse, so my body will pretty much be a loose cannon again, but I will do as my doctor says, because I don't want to get to the next phase. If, once I'm off of everything, there is still no change in the visual disturbances, I will be allowed to go BACK on the allergy medications and birth control. We will re-evaluate my preventatives and sleeping pills and generate a new plan for those. And an appointment will be made for me at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ. This is something I don't want to do. Even though the visual disturbances are a problem and they are screwing with my life and just getting worse, going to the Mayo Clinic is something that financially, I just can't even fathom trying to do. There's airfare to consider, hotel accomodations, transportation in Scottsdale, and the cost of going to the Clinic, as my insurance won't cover it. I'm still so far in debt from last year's medical bills and from not working for 6 months that I can't even imagine taking on this burden. So we'll see what happens from here. What will be will be. That's all I can say.... ~Liz [/QB][/QUOTE]
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