Frustrated by ENT

Thanks so much for this response. It helps a lot actually.

I’ve had psoriasis since infancy. It wasn’t ever horrible- stuck to scalp and hidden areas until adulthood when I got patches on my face. But still enough I didn’t see a specialist- since I was told by my parents that all a specialist could do was prescribe creams.

My Ménière’s started at 29 when we moved to a new state and I suddenly discovered a bunch of allergies I didn’t know I had. We moved to an area with a very diverse plant population- and I apparently was allergic to a lot of it. At first my doctor claimed I was having vertigo caused by congestion. I had to push to see a specialist after 3 attacks in a month.

Testing showed textbook Ménière’s- and that I thankfully was starting out with better than average hearing. I cut out caffeine and sodium immediately. Didn’t really see any improvement and started gaining weight despite how little I was able to eat. After a year I quit low sodium and no caffeine and went on a diuretic.

Around a year after diagnosis, right at my 30th birthday, I started having joint pain. My doctor claimed it was from bad arch support or maybe my weight. I argued that I had every symptom of psoriatic arthritis and went around her and got with dermatology directly. Surprise surprise- I was right. First biological we tried worked. Yay!

At some point during everything else going on with life I started having 5 days long episodes of weird ear fullness, noise sensitivity, etc. which is when I was diagnosed with vestibular migraines and added Meclizine to the mix of emergency meds on hand (I used children’s Benadryl for full Ménière’s episodes).

This plus some more episodes led to doing the inner ear injection which worked perfectly. Everything worked like a charm- other than bad luck of having the opposite ear drum rupture due to a very quickly occurring ear infection (less than 12 hours from first pain to ear drum rupture).

It’s just been the last six months I’m noticing issues again. But my arthritis is the worst it’s ever been and we haven’t gotten it quite under control. Seems after my most recent pregnancy- it returned with a vengeance postpartum. Humira didn’t work and I reacted to. Tremfya takes two weeks to take affect and wears off 2.5 weeks before I can take more.

Interestingly- the ENTs nurse had the same auto immune issue and she told me which rheumatologist I should reach out to. And I’ve been googling neurotologists and there’s one within 2 hours of me that also specializes in allergies (which is one of my big triggers)- so maybe he is a good first try along with actually getting with rheum.

Sorry for the long response but- it’s nice to hear from people who get it. And know about both conditions. Auto immune stuff is frustrating.

/r/Menieres Thread Parent