Thursday, October 7, 2021

Fake Honey Nut Cheerios. The Miracle Cure?

Mrs. HM has been feeling a bit under the weather for a little over a week. Out of sorts. Not herself. The main complaint being dizziness. Unless it's called vertigo. I don't know the difference, and I don't care to look it up. The best description I can give is that I feel like back when I was a drinkin' woman, in college, and had one (or six or seven) too many, and got the bedspins when I laid back. Or maybe it's called headspins, heh, heh. It's like you feel you are spinning, but when you open your eyes, everything is still in one place, but the spinning sensation continues.

Let the record show that I don't have my eyes closed when this happens, because I AM DRIVING! Yes. It comes on all at once, when least expected. Once it was right after I leaned over to turn the dial on T-Hoe's radio. I swear, it's like I'm living in primitive times, having to do that, with my XM Radio on the fritz, and Farmer H not lifting a finger to solve the problem. Other times, my head is perfectly still. Maybe driving, maybe sitting at a stop light. Maybe standing in line. I don't notice it when I'm walking in or out of a store.

Anyhoo... it's gotten to the point where I wonder if I should just stay home. But then I'll have a good day, with only a slight mild incidence of spinning. There's no rhyme nor reason to it. I've considered all the possible causes, and ruled them out. I'm not a doctor, you know, but I've watched all 15 seasons of ER.

I don't have any ear pain like I did a while back, with that random shooting sensation. No fever. No headache. I did have a bit of the crackly neck sensation. No water in my ears. I haven't been poking the cap of a Bic fine point in there. So I can't really blame the ears.

I don't think it's a lack of oxygen. When it happens, I take deep breaths. Like when an alarm kept going off after my thyroid surgery, waking me up, and a nurse would rush in and say, "BREATHE! BREATHE! DEEPER!" and then the alarm would stop. But then Farmer H noticed that they had an oxygen prong thing under my nose, but IT WASN'T HOOKED UP TO THE WALL OXYGEN! So it seems that oxygen is not my problem right now. I can breathe easily and deeply, not like when I had the pulmonary embolisms. So I've ruled that out as well.

I thought it might be heart-related. Like a-fib or something. But I don't notice anything off about my heartbeat, like back when my potassium got dangerously low, and I ended up in the ER with a skipping heart because my non-potassium-depleting blood pressure med had depleted my potassium, necessitating some horse pills for a while.
 
I thought maybe I was dehydrated. Old people get dehydrated, don't they? And it makes them confused. Maybe it contributes to balance problems, which might be caused by dizziness. But my main problem happens during the time I'm in town, and right after I return. So around 1:30 to 5:00. But I drink a full glass of water with my thyroid med around 11:30, and a bubba cup of water while eating Fake Honey Nut Cheerios and playing Candy Crush during 12:30 to 3:00. So I must be hydrated. I don't get the dizzies when I wake up, after not drinking water all night. Nor in the evening while sitting at New Delly computing.

With nothing else to go on, I decided to add a banana to my morning (noonish) meal of FAKE HONEY NUT CHEERIOS. Bananas are a good source of potassium. Farmer H bought some at the auction, and had some left that I bought at the store. So rather than let them go bad, I figured I'd have one a day. That did not seem to have any effect after four days. Even though I know it takes weeks to build the potassium level back up.

Anyhoo... on Tuesday, I got to thinking about the dizzies again. Wondering if it could be my medicines. Way back when I first started taking the beta-blocker, it made me tingly in the extremities, and feeling light-headed. Almost like a panic attack, but always within five minutes of taking that pill. After a while, I adjusted to it, and those symptoms stopped. But THIS dizziness is not like the light-headedness. Still, I took a look on the medicine bottles.

My thyroid med had no warning, other than the instructions to take it four hours after eating, or at least an hour before. That's what I do. Take it an hour before any Fake Honey Nut Cheerios. I lay out my other two meds, and take them right before eating. They say they can be taken with or without food. I've done it this way for a long time. I put them on the kitchen counter when I take the thyroid med, so I won't forget them, and then take them before sitting down at the kitchen table with HIPPIE.

Anyhoo... when I read the bottles for my beta blocker and my blood pressure med, BOTH OF THEM SAID "MAY CAUSE DIZZINESS!" 

So... on Wednesday, I ate my FAKE HONEY NUT CHEERIOS and banana, THEN took the beta blocker. After a half hour, I wasn't feeling any different. So I took the blood pressure med. Not much different, except it seems to loosen up my clogged sinuses sometimes, and make me clear my throat. My trip to town was perfectly normal. Not even a hint of discombobulation.

I am declaring FAKE HONEY NUT CHEERIOS to be a miracle cure! Or else a coincidence. I will continue to eat them BEFORE taking the second two meds, and stagger the ingesting of these two pills. Hope that fixes my problem. Or else I had something that I healed from on the day I tried this experiment. It's far from scientific...

 
Yum, yum, getcha some! Don't even need a prescription. This is the Save A Lot off-brand.

4 comments:

River said...

Damn you! Now I have to shut down the laptop and go out to buy a box of Crunchy nut cornflakes. Because we don't have Cheerios here. I think.
Anyway, I think the fake honey nut cheerios are a coincidence. I'm wondering if your clogged sinuses have anything to do with it. Sinuses are connected to the whole ear, nose, throat system, so if you have a problem there it could affect your ears just enough to cause the momentary dizziness, also known as vertigo.
I recommend you get those sinuses checked, maybe they need a surgical cleanout. or maybe you just need some antihistamine.

Hillbilly Mom said...

River,
There are worse vices! The Fake HNC may be a coincidence, but for the second day in a row, I was NOT DIZZY! So I'm going to keep up that ritual, just in case this juju works.

I thought it might be the sinuses, but they haven't made me dizzy like this before. My nose has been surprisingly clear for a couple weeks. I can breathe through my nose just fine. Maybe that fluid is in my ears, instead of my head. I could try an antihistamine, but as I remember, it makes me fall asleep, so I couldn't drive while taking it. And I'd have to read its effect on blood pressure first.

Sioux Roslawski said...

So, I guess you now need to have Farmer H make a shed for your medical clinic. I'm sure there are other miracle cures and forms of treatment you could peddle...

Hillbilly Mom said...

Sioux,
Farmer H himself has had every medical test known to man. And about half of the treatments. Back before his doctor retired, he had dizziness, and was sent to a place where they HUNG HIM UPSIDE DOWN. He said it was to do something in his inner ear. That's all they did. Hung him upside down. It helped for about a week, I think. Probably because he did not live his life upside down.