Finding the Delicate Balance

Life is a balance. It seems like every day I'm trying to find a good balance for things. I try to balance my time I spend with my kids and the time I try to clean the house. I try to balance the time I spend on my church callings with the time that I should be spending at home, and sometimes I know that I need to practice, so I don't lose the talents that Heavenly Father has given me. In the end, life is a balance. However, I never expected to have to think about this type of balance.



So, after several sets of pictures on my brain and multiple doctors (see previous post) the Neurologist decided that I have an inner ear problem. However, I had to go in for some tests to figure out whether it's my right inner ear or my left inner ear. Here is a picture that Rob took with his cell phone of me getting my horizontal balance test. First they told me to put these glasses on and look at a certain screen. Then, the guy blew hot air in my ear for a minute, and then told me to keep my eyes open. Then he did the same thing with my other ear. Then, he did the air all over again with freezing cold air. All through this test, I felt fine. Why? Because I was sitting or laying down the whole time. However, I knew something was wrong with me, so I came back to the Dr. today hoping that some results showed up on that test. I was disappointed but not wholly surprised when the Dr. told me today that the test came out completely normal.

After telling me that the horizontal test was normal, he told me that I needed to take a vertical balance test. I put on a harness sort of like a rapelling harness, and then they clipped it to D clips. Then they set me on a platform and moved the platform underneath me while I tried to keep my balance. For awhile, it felt like one of those virtual reality roller coasters (except that the roller coaster wasn't moving in front of the screen.) It was really fun until they made me shut my eyes. When my eyes were closed, and they were testing my balance with just my inner ear, I felt like I was going to fall off the platform. The guy had to keep pushing me back on. At the end of that test, I walked back to the office, and the Dr. promptly showed me my results. My inner ear is so out of whack that my balancing abilities while using it didn't even show up on the charts.

The next step is for me to go to a balance therapist and get exercises for me to do at home, so I can actually walk without feeling like I'm going to fall down! I have an appointment with that therapist on Wednesday. I hope to do another update then. Now, the trick is to add this type of balancing act into my already precarious balance of my life.