General Question
Symptoms: Unsteady Balance, Mild Head/Ear/Eye Aches — What's Causing This?
I’m 21, male, and 126lbs. For just over a month now, my head has been feeling weird. It started off with slight headaches (maybe a 3 or 4 out of 10, with 10 being the worst) which would happen anywhere on my head, but always on one side only — they would recur in waves, lasting for about 20–30 minutes and going away for another 20–30 minutes, pretty much all day long. Later on, I started getting earaches and a bit of dizziness/unsteadyness once in a while when a headache hit, but not every time (I could still walk, but it felt like I was on a rocking boat, not like “the room was spinning”). Also, I could feel pain behind my eyes sometimes, always in one eye only, making me want to massage my eyes. On one occasion while experiencing all these symptoms early on, I had diarrhea, but I think it may have been something I ate and unrelated.
Since it seemed to be getting worse, and I’d had these symptoms for a several days, I went to the emergency room at my local university; they looked in my ears, checked my pulse, etc. and found nothing. The doctor told me to take pain killers for the headaches and said if the symptoms continued, I should see my family doctor; if they got worse, I should come back to the ER. I didn’t think the headaches were bad enough to use pain killers, so I only used them occasionally.
At present, it has been a few weeks since that trip to the ER, and I’m still not feeling normal. Now, the headaches are pretty much gone, occurring only a few times a day and feeling as slight as if someone were simply touching my head; I haven’t had an earache in about 2 or 3 days, nor any eye pain — it seems like those symptoms are negligible now. However, the dizzyness/unsteadyness has definitely increased: I feel like I’m swaying back and forth on a rocking boat all the time now, whether standing up, sitting, walking, or lying down, or with my head in any position. I can still walk perfectly, I have no problems with fine motor skills or hand-eye-coordination, and it’s not enough to make me vomit or feel nauseous — if you saw me, you would have no idea that I’m having balance issues.
I did a little Google searching, but couldn’t find anything that matched exactly what I’m feeling. While I was out today, I stopped in a pharmacy and used their blood pressure machine to take a few readings: the first one was 123/65, pulse 71bpm; the second was 125/73, pulse 81bpm; the third was 116/72, pulse 72bpm; I did a few more readings after that, in which the systolic pressure dropped further to around 109, but I neglected to write those numbers down (for your information, I do get moderate exercise, but I don’t do any high-intensity sports/running/biking/swimming/etc). I understand these readings, but I’m not sure if they are good or bad. I’ll try to get another reading in the next couple of days to see if there is a change, as well as make an appointment with my doctor to discuss this with him.
Basically, I’m feeling quite unsteady right now, I’ve never had this before, and I’m not sure what’s causing it.
Do you have any ideas about what might be causing this? Have you ever experienced this? Do you know of any medications, diets or exercises that might help?
Thanks
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