I woke up really dizzy and bounced off walls and doorways all day. I also had blurry vision again, unfocused, with one image a bit on top of the other. This was worrying, but I had an ENT appointment the next day, so I figured I would wait until then to see what was going on. Again, my vision cleared within a few minutes.

I was really off balance! I had to touch something, walls or furniture, to get around the house. And I had double vision again, again clearing up in a few minutes after I woke up.

At the clinic, Hubby let me off at the curb outside the main entrance. I lost my balance trying to step up the curb and my feet had to scramble forward all the way to the door to keep me from falling on my face! By the time Hubby unbuckled his seat belt and started for me, I was already at the entrance door. I hit the frame of the door hard with both hands and thanked God I had not fallen. I just hoped no one had been watching! I waited until my head felt straighter and my heart slowed down, then weaved my way inside to the check-in desk. Then Hubby helped me into the waiting room.

When my name was called, Hubby had to help me down the corridor to the examining room; I could not manage it alone. The doctor seemed a little puzzled by my new symptoms, but not all that worried. He prescribed Meclizine for the dizziness, and didn't comment on the intermittent double vision at all. I guessed he had never heard of a relapse of RHS! He also gave me a referral for physical therapy for balance retraining. Apparently, there is a therapist specially trained in balance retraining at the Sports Medicine Center at the hospital I had been in. I asked him about getting a flu shot, but he advised against it until the virus had subsided.

The doctor cleaned out my ear again (ouch!!) and I seemed to be hearing the tuning forks a bit better, but there was one odd thing: One of the tuning forks sounded a half-tone higher in the affected ear than in the other! Later, I came to the conclusion that I had significant hearing loss at the main frequency of the fork vibration, and was hearing mostly the harmonic frequencies. He said the vesicles on my ear are healed enough so that I can go to my grandson's birthday dinner on Thursday. Hooray!

We stopped at the drug store on the way home and picked up the Meclizine, but when I took it, the dizziness got much worse! I had to sit very still in my big blue chair until it wore off. I supposed this may have been because I did not have vertigo, only the balance disorder. Obviously, I took no more of those pills!

I finished the Keflin tablets today, only the ear drops left of my meds. I was feeling lousy all day, tired and dizzy.

I was so dizzy and feeling so weak I had to skip the birthday dinner. My grandson and I were both disappointed. I haven't seen my babies for almost a month!

I felt even worse today, much dizzier, and the double vision was occurring intermittently throughout the day and taking longer to clear. If it wasn't better by morning I decided to call Urgent Care at the clinic.

This morning, the double vision did not clear at all, and I was so rocky on my pins I could hardly stand up. I called Urgent Care to see if they could see me, but the nurse told me to get to the Emergency Room as soon as possible! She said that double vision could be a sign of something very serious going on.

So, another reeling walk to and from the car, this time with a death grip on Hubby's arm. I signed in and gave my insurance information and symptoms to the admitting clerk, and Hubby helped me to a chair in the waiting room. I just love the ER. (Not!) I just closed my eyes and waited, because I could neither read nor watch TV because of the double vision.

When my name was called, I found I could not get out of the chair. As I leaned forward to get up, I almost fell over and took the chair with me. At this point Hubby was so frightened for me he was white! The nurse hurried over with a wheelchair and Hubby helped me into it. Then they took my vital signs and I reiterated my symptoms to the nurse. Then I was wheeled to a private examining room to wait for a doctor to see me. The same older hospitalist that I had seen before checked me out and decided to call in a neurologist. By this time it was about 1:00 P.M. and I was starving! I had had only a banana for breakfast, and they had not asked me if I wanted any lunch! I had to ask two health care techs before I finally got a nurse and asked for a lunch menu. It was delicious, as usual, but by the time the food arrived at 2:45 P.M., I was almost too tired to eat it. It was my good fortune that the neuro on call was a youngish woman who had treated RHS several times before. She recognized at once that I was having a relapse, and that the virus was active again. She also said that I had probably been ramped down off the Prednisone too quickly and my nerves were having a hissy fit! She told me that the latest practice was to ramp down slowly over 4-5 weeks, not one! (That information had not yet been updated in the treatment database that the hospital used the first time I was admitted.) She is a sweet and caring person and, even though she is younger than my own daughter, she makes me feel very confident in her ability to figure out what to do with me! When she checked me out, my right eye was wandering all over the place, the right ear had almost no hearing, my balance was nonexistent, and the droop in my face was back to its worst. She feared that the virus was invading another cranial nerve, one that controlled muscles that moved my eyeball. I was seeing double, one image above the other, rather than side by side. This meant something to her, but I have no idea what! Perhaps it indicated which nerve was being affected? At least the herpetic pain had not returned! I just had an itchy ear.

The neuro decided I should be admitted and put on Acyclovir again, this time intravenously, as well as Prednisone by mouth, to try to ease the inflammation in the eye-controlling nerve as quickly as possible, before irrepairable damage was done to my vision, i.e., the ability to focus my eyes in coordination with each other. At this point, I sent Hubby home with a long list of goodies to bring. This time I knew I was in for several days, so I wanted to be prepared.

The neuro attempted to do a spinal tap, unsuccessfully because of the arthritis in my spine. She had intended to examine the spinal fluid to be sure of the diagnosis of RHS, but she said she would have given me the same meds anyway, so the tap wasn't critical enough to put me under anesthesia and do a proper job of it.

At about 4:00 P.M. I finally got my ride upstairs, this time to a private room (more on that later) on the second floor. My window overlooked a lovely courtyard, and I had my own private birch tree right outside the window! I settled in as best I could, and had an IV line inserted into a vein in the back of my right hand. I was connected to the IV pump and the first dose of Aclovir (the IV form of Acyclovir) was started. Then I called down for dinner and called Hubby, in that order. I had a short nap, then ate, and Hubby came with two big bags of stuff right after dinner. I really needed the tape player with the books on tape, because I couldn't read or watch TV, I couldn't even look out the window very well!

I was getting the IV Aclovir five times a day; 20 mg Prednisone, twice a day; and using the artificial tears whenever needed, which was more often than once an hour. The air in the hospital must have been really dry, because my eye was sore and itchy, and I had to keep it patched even more of the time than I did at home.

The neuro came by to see me at about 7:00 P.M. to make sure I was hooked up and to check my neurological signs again. I was no worse, so she said she'd see me in the morning. At 8:00 P.M. I shooed Hubby out of the room, rolled over and went to sleep for the night, waking only for vital signs and meds.

When I awoke in the morning, I could tell immediately that my balance was improving! I was able to get myself to the bathroom, and my vision seemed a little more focused. The neuro dropped by about 7:30 A.M. to check on me. She said I was doing much better already, better than she had expected. She said this is a good indication that we got at the virus before any serious damage was done to the eye-controlling nerve.

When I asked the nurse why I had been given a private room this time, she told me it was because I had already been diagnosed with a herpes-type problem, so was automatically given a private room. When I asked her why I had been in a four-bed ward the time before, when I had open chicken pox lesions, she said it was because I hadn't yet been diagnosed until the lesions showed up, and by then everyone in the room had been exposed to me. Hospital logic!!

Hubby came in to visit in the afternoon, favoring his left arm a bit. He had gone for his flu shot just before coming to see me. He told me that they were almost out of the vaccine because so many more people than they expected had decided to be immunized. I knew at that point that I probably would not be able to get a flu shot this year!