Wish I
knew what causes my ding dang vertigo. Drives me batty. Heard of it? The Tilt-a-Whirl from Hades. The hangover
that isn't. The devil’s last laugh.
Yep, vertigo
is wicked all right. The world spins topsy-turvy out of control with every
movement of the head. Or even eyes. It’s like you just rolled off a
merry-go-round after being shoved round and round by a 250-pound linebacker.
Only it doesn't stop after you get off and stagger around the playground.
This bout
hit me the day we returned home from our beach week. I'd forgotten but Spouse
reminded me that I got vertigo last year during our annual Daytona week too. Go figure. I wonder if it has
something to do with sand. Or glare. Or shrimp. Those are the things I do
in Daytona that I don't do at home.
Hmm. I suspect it’s the cosmos’ way of telling me not to wear bathing suits.
Maybe it’s
hereditary. My father suffers with it too, more frequently than me. We both
take Antivert, which helps but doesn't cure it. At least with the medicine you
can pseudo-function without throwing up every time you rise from a chair. But walls
still have a way of jumping out and whacking you in the shoulder when
you try to traverse hallways and the sidewalk still swerves away from you when
you walk the dog and you end up in somebody’s shrubbery pretending that you’re
looking for Rover’s lost ball.
I
recently found in my possession 1940-era British medical literature regarding vertigo
that warned, among other clever things like “make sure your spectacle prescription
is up to date,” that it is a very bad idea to walk along unlit stony paths
late at night during a dizzy spell ... you might end up in the ditch. In which
case you may well invoke a disgruntled bobby to escort you to the loo or worse,
the slammer, under the erroneous impression that you’ve visited one too many
pubs.
Dear me. Guess I'll
just have to curb my late night unlit stony path hikes.
The
brochure also said activities that require rapid side-to-side righting movements
of the body and head are good therapy ... example: tennis. The risks, however,
include falling flat on your face when you look up to hit your serve. Or
impaling yourself on the back fence when you run after a lob.
Harrumph.
Mere hiccups to true tennis addicts like me.
I’ve
actually played tennis – more than once – in the throes of a vertigo episode
(you can probably only understand this if you’re another full fledged tennis junkie).
It’s kind of an out-of-body experience. Gives new meaning to the term “dizzy
blonde.”
Why, you
wonder, would anyone subject themselves to abject humiliation and certain
defeat playing a competitive game with her head screwed on sideways? Um, I
dunno. I suppose addiction is the operative word here.
It wasn't really that bad. Aside from only
winning two games in two sets, the worst part was following the ball. Back and
forth. Back and forth. Whack. Whack. Whack. By the time my already spinning
eyes (a Vertigo symptom called nystagmus) could hone in on that little yellow
sphere suddenly appearing just beyond the tip of my nose, the rest of me was
flopping all over itself trying to remember how to be coordinated enough to connect
my racquet with the ball.
You feel like
a marionette being operated by a giant invisible hand hovering over the court. And
the hand’s got a nasty twitch.
So you go
home and take another pill.
Unfortunately,
a side effect of Antivert is an anvil in your skull. It’s what I call the dead
meat syndrome - meaning you can't think clearly and only want to lie on the
couch all day trying not to draw flies.
There's
no good way to sleep. I usually end up propping myself upright in bed in a sitting
position and sandbagging my head on all sides so it can’t move. This doesn't lend itself to rolling over once you've finally lost consciousness, which tends
to pitch you right out of bed with arms flailing as you either blacken Spouse’s
eye or send the bedside lamp flying.
Oh, you
can be proactive if you choose. The vertigo exercises (mostly weird head/body
positioning movements to dislodge stuck inner ear crystals) do help Daddy although
they merely make me vomit. Even thinking about them now sends a wave of nausea
through my gut. Rather like hanging upside down from the mast of a ship when
you already have raging seasickness.
It’s
enough to make me never, ever eat shrimp again. Just in case.
