Tullio phenomenon and Empty sella

I learned two new things about myself today.

First, I discovered this morning that I have Tullio phenomenon.  I didn’t realize it before, but after sitting downstairs for a while I ran upstairs to talk to Beth.  My heart was beating loud in my right ear, due to the sudden exercise.  As I was looking out the window I realized that my eyes were “bouncing” left and right in time with the sound of my heartbeat.  The medical term for this is pathologic nystagmus.  It’s a common symptom of superior canal dehiscence.  But, although I suspected I had some mild symptoms like this, I didn’t know for sure until today.  It was strange.  I held my head perfectly still against the glass of the window, and focused on a tree in the park.  My line of sight, though, bounced about 10 feet to the left of the tree whenever I could hear my pulse.

Second, according to Dr. Gianoli’s initial review of my head MRI from a couple months ago, I have an empty sella.  Gianoli’s the most likely person to do surgery on me to fix my superior canal dehiscence (see above), and so I sent him some of my medical test results, the week before last.  I got an email today from him saying he’s looked things over, and he noticed the empty sella, which wasn’t noted on the report.  Nobody else who looked at the MRI mentioned this to me.  I don’t even know what it means, other than what I read on Wikipedia.