Ménière's syndrome: two stories
Testimonies reported by the authors
Excerpt from the chapter “Other applications and their results” of the book TOMATIS — Une expérience à partager (TOMATIS — An Experience to Share, by Juan Antonio Timor Pineda and Chaime Marcuello Servós). Presented without naming the patients, out of respect for their privacy.
Ménière’s syndrome combines intense vertigo, hearing loss and tinnitus; it arises without warning and can reduce one to incapacity. The book reports two journeys.
A woman of about fifty lived confined to her bed, the vertigo preventing her from getting up, from driving, from working. After some sixty Tomatis sessions, the vertigo had disappeared; her hearing loss in the left ear had markedly diminished, and the tinnitus had become imperceptible. Beyond the physical improvement, the authors note a change in the way she looked upon her own life.
A young man in his twenties, with an exemplary university record and a frenetic pace of life, had found himself one morning unable to get up. Two months of specialist consultations had changed nothing. By the thirtieth session, the authors write, he had recovered his life — and understood something the doctors had not told him: his body had spoken before he did.