life after a diagnosis but still in Australia

After a year of being sick Soeun got a diagnosis which seemed to make sense (although things are still mysterious, we need a label to go with so we use it). So having the name "Vestibular Migraine" seemed to help, but life was still up and down.

On June 21st 2012 I wrote this:

Last week was a good week for Soeun. Relatively speaking he was healthy, he had an intensive class, so it was really exhausting but he made it through the week. I sent an email to our prayer partners to let them know. We were really thankful for this as last time he had a class it took almost 2 months before he was well enough to do anything.

But this week he has struggled to see clearly, blurry vision is one of the problems caused by his inner ear migraine. Not being able to focus his eyes well enough to read is really hindering his study, as you can imagine. He is more healthy than last year, but its still an ongoing issue. We're both really sick of living with sickness!

One thing that has made this week bearable is that we enjoy where we are living this year. We have our own space to relax in. The recent public holiday was a really nice day, I spent the whole day inside watching the rain and reading.

timeline 2011-2012, part 4, doctor 6- the long awaited ENT appointment

After a long wait it was finally the day when we could see an ENT doctor.

By this stage Soeun had been in pain for about half a year. Although he couldn't totally explain it I could see the impact that it had on him.

He was really excited to finally be able to come to Australia and do some study we had been talking about for the past 5 years. It was easy to see how relevant the subjects were to his work back in Cambodia.
But frustratingly the tinnitus, ear fullness, dizziness was too overwhelming for him to think clearly. These also brought on nausea and fatigue.

Half a year of debilitating symptoms  and so far all we had was a pile of negative test results. I was hoping the visit to the ENT would be a breakthrough.

But I don't even remember what he did now, apart from telling us he was referring us to another doctor. Oh and charged us a lot of money.

what was life like in the 2nd year of being sick?

On June 21st I wrote:

Last week was a good week for Soeun. Relatively speaking he was healthy, he had an intensive class, so it was really exhausting but he made it through the week. I sent an email to our prayer partners to let them know. We were really thankful for this as last time he had a class it took almost 2 months before he was well enough to do anything.

But this week he has struggled to see clearly, blurry vision is one of the problems caused by his inner ear migraine. Not being able to focus his eyes well enough to read is really hindering his study, as you can imagine. He is more healthy than last year, but its still an ongoing issue. We're both really sick of living with sickness!

One thing that has made this week bearable is that we enjoy where we are living this year. We have our own space to relax in. The recent public holiday was a really nice day, I spent the whole day inside watching the rain and reading.

timeline of 2011-2012 part 2, the third doctor

The first doctor said the problem was related to blood cell shape, while the second thought it was an ear issue so we wanted to get a referral to an ENT . And I think the third one didn't think there was anything wrong.

At our first visit to the third doctor looked at our pile of negative test results and listened to Soeun say he was dizzy. As a GP he sees a lot of dizzy people and he wasn't going to just send us off to a specialist straight away. He ran some of his own tests, and after waiting and going back for results we found Soeun had low vit D. 

He finally, reluctantly , wrote a letter for us to see an ENT. 

So then we made an appointment with the ENT and became the months long wait.

We can't remember if his blurry vision had started by this time, or if it came later.

In the mean time Soeun's symptoms got worse, and our whole situations just kept getting harder, the longer it went on.  

I think by now it was almost half way through the year.