What I Learned From Lucille Ball

How one little question made me rethink my approach to decision making, diet, exercise and my future joy.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

A month ago, after a few weeks of me feeling lousy, with vision issues, balance problems and ongoing headaches, I decided I needed to see a doctor. My vision problems began after I started a new job. As a writer, I spend hours on the computer. I’d never had any problems before, but by the end of about my third week, it was like the words were jumping all over my laptop screen.

I went to an ear, nose and throat doctor. See, not only do I have all these weird issues going on with my eyes, but I was also having challenges with my balance and feeling dizzy and nauseous.

A hearing test and the balance issues — which have been happening on and off most of my life — combined with tinnitus (ringing in the ear), point towards the possible diagnosis, of Meniere’s disease. Meniere’s basically causes vertigo, which can come out of nowhere and be triggered by things like stress and diet. It can be pretty horrible. My great aunt had it and she ended up having part of her inner ear removed to stop it.

I went to the doctor, got the hearing test, learned I had hearing loss in the low frequency, a symptom leading the doctor to believe I might have Meniere’s.

I was prescribed a water pill. The simplest way to try and reduce some of my symptoms, he said, was to reduce the amount of water in my body.

I am not the type of person who likes to take medicine. I’m not against medicine. I think medicine and doctors are great. I just know that most prescription medicine causes some kind of other side effect or problem. And that is precisely what happened when I took the water pill.

They told me I’d need to drink a lot of water.

Water pills get prescribed to people with health issues like high blood pressure and heart failure. Once I started to take the pills I immediately — I’m not exaggerating — had to start drinking mass quantities of water. And, I had to start eating anything and everything to keep my potassium levels from getting thrown off. I was basically eating and drinking like crazy to help myself not feel terrible.