Ménière's syndrome: two stories

Excerpt from the chapter “Other applications and their results” of the book TOMATIS — Une expérience à partager (Juan Antonio Timor Pineda and Chaime Marcuello Servós). Presented without naming, out of respect for the patients’ privacy.

Ménière’s syndrome combines intense vertigo, hearing loss and tinnitus; it strikes without warning and can be utterly disabling. The book reports two journeys.

A woman of about fifty lived confined to her bed, the vertigo preventing her from getting up, driving or working. After some sixty Tomatis sessions, the vertigo had disappeared; the hearing loss in her 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 of about twenty, with an exemplary university record and a frantic 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.