Hi, Michelle,
I have not forgotten my promise yet. Here is my experience about the balance problem after the surgery. As you know, it could be quite different from one case to the other. Just hope it would be of some help to you.
I was told before the surgery that I would lose completely both my hearing and balance nerves on my left side. In fact, it was explained to me that completely removing the balance nerve on one side is an advantage for surgery over Gamma-Knife. In this way, I have a very good chance to "learn" back most of my balance skill by using the right side nerve only. If not completely removed, the ill functioning left nerve would keep interfering my good right side nerve and difficult to get it right.
So the first thing I need to do is to "learn" my balance back. The doctor wanted me to do as much activity as possible, of course within the safety limit. Whenever I found difficult to do something, he wanted me to try it with even greater effort. One female technical staff in my surgical team also emphasized that to me. She also had AN surgery a few years back. She went back to the ballet dance class shortly after the surgery and showed me one of the posture with only one leg standing.
Right after my surgery, the response of my eye to a moving object was expected to be slower than normal, which caused dizziness and blurry vision. I was asked to do two kind of eye exercise several times everyday. 1) Stare at a fix object and moving my head from one side to the other and from slow to quick. 2) Hold my head fix and moves my sight from one side to the other, again, from slow to fast. I did not notice the progress day by day, but it definitely made difference from week to week. This help me to get away from dizziness in a few weeks.
I was also asked to practice walking in straight line with heel touch toes. It took me several weeks of practice everyday to be able to walk straight.
One thing the doctor did not tell me is the dizziness from by upper body movement. I went back to work at the fifth week after the surgery; no problem for driving, nor problem for climbing the stairs. However, every time when I went to mall with my wife, I got tired after about one hour and felt dizzy. In one of company's outing, I was play ping-pong with a colleague. I was not able to chase the ball when it went off the table. It was then, I realize that I got dizzy feeling (light headed) when I make big upper body movement. I have not had a chance to discuss with my doctor. I bet, he will tell me to make a greater effort to do that movement more frequently. I do believe, practice is the best tool to gain my balance back. Unfortunately, I have not been diligent enough to practice routinely.
Now, I have no problem to do most of what I need to do, including the yard work. I do need to be more careful, i.e., knowing my limitation.
Good luck
David(707)
