It’s Saturday and the pain is still getting worse and I feel even more dizzy. Back to the doctor’s office with the doctor on duty for Saturday. This time the doctor sees the redness in my left ear and noted that I had a slight fever. Hooray, I will get something for this pain! Wrong! I was given amoxycillin to take for 10 days to clear up my “ear infection” and nothing for pain.

Today I noticed increased numbness on the left side of my face and it felt weird to shave that part of my face. My dizziness was worse and I had a lot of trouble just walking. I called the doctor again - I was beginning to feel like a pest. He told me to take some over the counter pills for 'motion sickness'.

By this Monday, Blue Monday, I was in awful shape and this time made an appointment with my own Primary Care Doctor. My wife and I said to him "We're not leaving here until we know what is going on" and he said he didn't want us to leave until he knew what was going on. Finally! He did some quick neurological tests and looked in my ear and realized this was something that had to be dealt with seriously. He ordered an MRI and I went to get it as soon as I left his office. My daughters met us at the hospital, as they were indeed concerned as well at this point. They couldn't believe my condition when they saw me. By this time, I was so dizzy I had to use a wheelchair to move around the hospital corridors. The results came back right away and my PCP doc explained all of it to me while I was still at the hospital. He diagnosed the RHS correctly and ordered the Valtrex and steroids for treatment. He recommended the 800 mg dosage of ibuprofen as needed for the pain. So, finally, after 10 days of misery I was on my way to getting better. He stressed the importance of rest and taking time off from work, so that's what I did. The tiredness was so overwhelming that I only wanted to sleep anyway. I was also very nauseous so I did not have much of an appetite. During the course of the first 2 weeks I went from 165 down to about 153 even while taking steroids.

The other bad news that I received on that blue Monday was that the MRI also showed a benign pituitary adenoma (brain tumor) that was quite large and pushing on my optic nerves and was wrapped around my carotid arteries. I know it seems crazy but I was so happy to finally have a diagnosis for my current illness that the tumor news didn’t bother me all that much. I thought I could deal with it when I got feeling better. It was all very overwhelming to say the least.

I started to heal very quickly after beginning the course of medications. I was taking the 800 mg of Ibuprofen 3 times a day and I finally had some relief from the pain. About this time I discovered this web site and began reading everything I could about Ramsay Hunt. I perused the diaries and also read the latest posts. It was so good to know that I was not alone and that I had answers now to what was going on with me. About this time, I began having strange taste sensations. At first everything tasted metallic and I blamed that again on the colloidal silver I had taken until I realized that it was just another symptom of the syndrome.