Hi, I'm 4 years post op. I was diagnosed with a 3+ cm tumor on the right side. I had it removed in 2011 by retrosigmoid procedure. I've had countless problems since then, among them ataxia, right-facial paralysis, deafness, no fine motor skills on right side of body. Many of you are facing or have faced the same challenges. But I'm actually curious about 2 new symptoms that have occurred only in the past few months. It's April of 2015, so I'd say it has been ongoing since November of 2014.
The first is the gagging. Any time I eat or drink water, food, anything, I start coughing followed by gagging. Sometimes the coughing is quite violent. There is no nausea or other feelings which often accompany nausea. Sometimes I don't cough, but the gagging will start. Since the surgery my husband and I have noticed that I begin coughing at almost every meal. Almost like someone who is choking or swallowed something wrong, except I'm not choking. I just start coughing. Now I'm starting to gag. I don't know why or what could be causing this. Like I said there is no nausea or heart burn or anything else, just gagging. A few times the coughing and gagging became so severe that I actually threw up.
The second is feeling how a person might feel during that moment right before they fall asleep, except I'm awake and not going to sleep. The best and closest description I've read is by AN Forum member "Nancy T" who wrote: "About a month or six weeks after my sudden hearing loss, I began getting what at the time I called "brain blinks" for lack of a better word. I would suddenly get a split-second feeling that I was about to involuntarily close my eyes and conk out, accompanied by a sensation of "total dizziness" or "whump' in my head and also a "burst" of "extra" static in my bad ear (which had constant whirring tinnitus anyway)."
I feel like my brain is going to fall asleep. It's like a wave in my head accompanied by a wooshing sound. I have constant tinnitus anyway, like a radiator hissing, but this is an increase in the pitch in a whoosh.
The only thing is, she didn't have an acoustic neuroma, so I'm wondering if anybody who has had an AN removed has experienced these things. Also did you get a diagnosis for either of these experiences and what did you do?
Maybe this is related and maybe not, but twice in the past 6 months I have experienced extreme vertigo. Granted I was a passenger in a car. The last occurrence was last week. My husband was turning into a parking lot when all of a sudden I had such severe vertigo that it felt like my brain hurt and I felt like throwing up. My brain couldn't make sense of what my eyes were seeing. I can't explain how violent and disorienting it was. I actually put my hands up to my head and started to squeeze my head to get it to stop.
Anyway, any help or response would be appreciated.
