Paralysis and balance problem

[Pearl111]

Hi, my friend had been feeling a little ill for approx 4 days when she woke up one morning (five days ago) at 3am and could not get up. She was taken to hospital.  They said that it might be some virus in the middle ear, but with extremely long delays, she still has not heard about blood tests.
That's why I'm posting this question..
She has been experiencing weakness on the left side of her body. Does not have an appetite at all.  She cannot even look around while lying flat, she gets very dizzy.  The numbness and weakness became less on the left hand side, but since yesterday she's experiencing weakness in the right arm.
She had quite a stressful time two weeks ago when she lost a close family member.  It seems that the doctor might think that it is stress related and got a psychologist to prescribe Ativan and some other drug.  I'm very worried, they are trying different things and not getting to the core of the problem.
thank you

[Nancy T]

Yes, I didn't mean to say that blood tests can't find viruses, only that you can't prove that a particular virus a person carries is responsible for their inner-ear problems. (As far as I know.) I wasn't clear about that.

Nancy T.

[Wear/a/Jimmy]

Actually blood test can be used to identify several things. But one of them is the Herpes Igg Igm type test. All it will do is show that she has had exposure to the Herpes virsu sometime in her life. But that does not mean that is wha is going on at this time.

Which I doubt it is. Sounds to me like a CVA.

The best kind of physician would be a neurotologists, the best king od doctor would be an audiologist. The best team approach would be a neurootologist, audiologists, imageing and from that point neuro surgeon, PT depending on the pathology.

[Nancy T]

Hopefully they are ruling out stroke and MS. Migraine can cause dizziness and some stroke-like symptoms, although numbness due to migraine aura shouldn't last that long.

It's possible that stress might trigger any of the above-mentioned conditions, though it wouldn't be the underlying cause of them.

Hopefully the doctors have done brain scans--CT and/or MRI.

A virus affecting the inner ear (not middle ear) can cause vestibular neuritis or labyrinthitis, which are basically inflammation of the hearing and balance nerve or structures in the inner ear. This can cause severe dizziness and in some cases hearing loss.I don't think these cases can be identified by blood tests. It is thought that just a cold virus, or a lurking chicken pox virus left over from childhood, can do this to the inner ear. They can't really tell.

Vestibular neuritis or labyrinthitis do not cause numbness or weakness, but if a virus affected her whole system, maybe it's the cause of the numbness and weakness as well? I don't know. Viruses can cause all kinds of strange stuff.

Anxiety can cause a lot of weird symptoms, including all that you mentioned. But the doctors should ABSOLUTELY NOT conclude that it's anxiety until they have ruled out other possibilities.

The best kind of doctor to figure out dizziness and balance problems is a neuro-otologist, that is, an ENT (ear, nose, and throat doctor) who specializes in the inner ear.

There are also a few neurologists who specialize in dizziness. I would think that a good neurologist should be the one to try first to figure this out, given that she also has numbness and weakness.

Best of luck to her.

Nancy T.