Fourteen months ago, about 8:00 AM on a Monday morning, I stopped at a grocery store to grab a few snacks to take to work. I looked up near the top of a shelf and felt a little disoriented for a moment. I shrugged it off and headed for the checkout. A few minutes later, while walking to the car, I was suddenly very dizzy. The world spun around me. I made it to the car, sat in the driver's seat and held on. I stared at the logo of the car at the center of the steering wheel. After five very alarming minutes, my dizziness subsided.
I had no idea what just happened to me, but I had a sinking feeling that wasn't all of it. I made it home before anything else happened. Once I was there, just as out of the blue as the first episode, I was intensely dizzy again. It was so extreme I could barely make it to the couch. I knew there was no way I could make it to work, so I called in. Afterwards I sat there and waited for it to subside, like last time.
Only this time, it didn't. The room spun violently around my head for two weeks straight. On the first day, after about an hour of dizziness I was sick as a dog. I wouldn't be able to hold anything down for a couple of days. I spent entire days sitting on the couch, struggling to focus on just one thing across the room. But I couldn't, at all. In order to get to the bathroom, I had to crawl on my hands and knees.
Some positions were better than others. Amazingly, and thankfully, I could close my eyes and feel relatively normal, so I was able to sleep at night. My doctor thought I had BPPV- positional vertigo brought on by a dislodged rock in my inner ear. Brains use the rocks to tell whether the person is upside down or right side up, moving or not moving, turning or going straight. Abbey and I researched it and learning about the Epley maneuver- a series of positions designed to jostle the errant rock back into position. In one part of the maneuver, with me flat on my back and with my head turned right, I almost felt normal. But not totally. So I was able to lie in that position and at least keep from feeling sick the whole time.
After a few days, my mom brought over some Dramamine. That did make me a feel a little better. A few more days later the doc decided he wanted to order an MRI to make sure I didn't have any tumors in my head leaning on an optical nerve. It was about a week into my crisis and I was still only barely able to get out of the house. Someone had to support most of my weight down the front steps or I couldn't make it. In cars, I had to focus on something on the dashboard- relatively static in relation to my head- in order to not feel sick. I was also quite sensitive to light. They fetched a wheelchair when we arrived for the MRI, and someone had to help me both in and, later, out. In the MRI chamber, I had a better time with it than many people do- the claustrophobia didn't bother me so much, because inside was a little black spot of something that was very close to my head- I could focus on it and feel ok. By this point in my illness I had become quite good at staring intently at something for hours- I did nothing else all day.
The Dramamine helped a little bit. To help a bit more, the doc gave me some other stuff that is very similar to Dramamine, but worked a tad better for me. Also, he gave me a prescription for Valium. It turns out it has something in common with those two other drugs: they all force the brain to not rely on the inner ears for directional information. Valium would have the extra benefit of relaxing me so I could sleep through the rough bits. I actually never had to use the Valium, I'm thankful to say, but it was reassuring to have something a bit more powerful at my disposal in case the need arose.
After about two weeks of this unique torture, my illness entered a new phase. As abruptly as it came, the vertigo disappeared one day. But there were, and continue to be to this day, after effects. My symptoms changed from aggressive vertigo to a more subtle- but equally irritating- feeling of bobbing on water at all times. Actually, the technical term is Mal de Debarquement- the feeling of having just gotten off of a boat. It felt more like being on a boat, though, with me nowhere near getting me sea legs. If I moved my head too quickly, reality would blur, as if the universe were a giant bucket of water, with everything sloshing around a little slower than me.
By this time, I was seeing an ear, nose and throat specialist. It was his determination, since the Epley maneuver never really helped me, I was most likely suffering from labyrinthitis, an acute infection of the directional semi-circular ear canals by a virus. The virus makes everything in there swell up; the resulting high pressure goofs up the ability of the canals to assist with orientation. He said how it came on with me was pretty typical. For starters, before I got it, I had a series of head colds. He said the infection causes acute vertigo frequently followed by Mal de Debarquement. It would just go away on its own. But there was a possible downside: it could also cause neural damage in my inner ear. This might need therapy to counteract.
The feeling of bobbing on the water persists to this day- though in only the last three weeks or so, the effects are quite minimal, and I feel dizziness- at this point more of a sensation of light headedness- only occasionally. Strangely, the dizziness has intensified the effects of a virus Abbey and I contracted- along with the usual flu-like symptoms, I had the added bonus of feeling dizzy. Since my symptoms dragged on over the months, my ENT was afraid I had sustained some sort of permanent neural damage. To determine whether I had, he suggested I pay a visit to an
audiologist to have my hearing checked.
I showed up dutifully, donned heavy, clunky headgear and climbed into an isolation booth. The results? In the "noise" region of the sound spectrum- around 7000hz- I have a deep notch in my hearing. Such is the legacy of the very loud concerts I attended with no ear protection in my twenties. In all other areas of the sound spectrum, however, I had the hearing of a 19 year old- perfectly balanced. If I had sustained some sort of neural injury, there would be imbalance- a weakness in the damaged ear. They could not prove that I had that sort of damage.
To make super extra sure, my doc ordered something called a PENG test. The point of the PENG test is to judge one's reaction to visual stimuli, and - the fun part- artificially stimulate dizziness in the subject in order to determine what makes them dizzy. I passed the reaction to stimuli part pretty well. After playing a game of follow-the-jumping-red-light-with-your-eyes, It was determined I have the visual reflexes of an athlete. So, once again, it seemed I had no neural damage or resulting imbalance. Then came the part where they induced me to be dizzy- and, therefore, sick. The audiologist achieved this by blowing very warm air into my ear. This was rather unpleasant, and it worked like a charm- after each test I felt dizziness creep into my perception, and a peculiar sort of warmness before starting to get ill.
The tests, as interesting as they were, really proved nothing in the end, other than my partial hearing loss. It was still anyone'e bet why my dizziness has lingered the way it has. I feel hopeful; the effects are pretty minimal, but I will occasionally be bummed to discover the dizziness is not totally gone when I feel it when moving my head too fast or- this is pretty strange- I find myself getting sick watching a video that contains rotational movement. There is always a chance I will contract this again- though the chances for anyone to get it more than once are pretty remote. It has been a major stressor for me this year, and when I think about it too much I actually get a little nauseous, which is why it's taken me this long to even want to talk about it. If you have acute dizziness and your doc identifies it as labyrinthitis, don't forget no matter how upsetting it is to not be able to do anything but sit there and try to focus on something, anything, it's temporary.
Update- I wrote this piece a couple of months ago. Since then, the symptoms have been subsiding even more, but at a snail's pace. Very gradually, I have been returning to normal. At this point, I just feel a little weird when I look down, then up quickly- a little off kilter, like a mild head rush. The only way to describe how this feels is like crossing your eyes to make two images of everything, and verrrry slowwwly letting the world come back into focus. Right now the images are just a millimeter apart- just enough to make me feel a bit woozy. It occasionally makes me mildly ill, and it's still hard to watch videos of things spinning. But I feel 99% normal. It took over a year to get to this point.
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