An inner-ear disease left Laura with intense vertigo and no chance of maintaining a stage career. After sacrificing her hearing for treatment, she found her way to the spotlight and started living the life she always wanted.
Laura's Story
"I woke up one morning and fell flat on my face."
I couldn't stand up. It was like the rug had been pulled from beneath me, so I went to see an ear specialist that day. I was told that I had a brain tumor or Multiple Sclerosis and they were doing an MRI to figure out which one it was. Then they told me that they were wrong. I didn't have anything life threatening, but I did have Meniere's disease, which causes intense vertigo attacks that last for hours and hours.
"Having Meniere's put an end to my stage career."
Before the chronic vertigo, I had been a comedy writer and done a lot of theater. I had to pretty much set that side of my life aside. I went on writing the comedy because I could do that from home. You never know when you are going to have one of these horrible attacks, so you can never really go anywhere.
"It got worse and worse until finally I was having two attacks a day, lasting up to seven hours at a time."
I found a premiere ear specialist who happened to be two miles from my house who was known for treating Meniere's. They wait for the disease to get really bad before they will treat you with this particular procedure because it pretty much wipes out the hearing in your ear. They treated me, so today I have really good hearing on my right hand side and almost no hearing on the left hand side. There is a 25 percent chance that the Meniere's disease will come to my good side. That made me realize that if I am going to do something, I better do it right now.
"I wanted to write and perform my own material."
For a while, I had resigned myself to the idea that this was what my life was going to be like forever. Then when I realized that I had actually been fixed, I looked around and thought what happened to me? Going through this experience and then coming back from it and being normal made me realize something that I might not otherwise have. I felt so determined at that point to do what I originally wanted to do.
I was glad to have one ear left so I wanted to be able to sing as long as I could. It is like this illness that I had was an epiphany for me, and getting healed from that illness changed my life.
