As the World Spins

My vertigo is flaring up again. I feel like an 80 year old woman.

Well, maybe not that old - but let's face it, being 42 years old with high blood pressure and periodic bouts of vertigo make me feel old. I miss those carefree days when all I had to worry about was the occasional headache from drinking one too many beers the night before. Don't get me wrong, I've been blessed with relatively good health and I'm thankful for that. But I'm always ready for the other shoe to drop. The past few years have taught me that nothing lasts forever and you can't take anything for granted.

My first bout with vertigo happened on the day of my sister's graduation from college, back in 1997. I'll never forget it - I woke up that morning freezing cold in our family's VW camper van, having slept in it the night before due to limited space in my sister's house and lack of available hotel rooms. I sat up and my entire world began to spin. My first thought was, did I drink that much last night? I knew I hadn't, but couldn't explain it any other way.

Then I made the mistake of flipping my head upside down later than morning as I was blow-drying my hair and this time the spinning didn't stop when I stood back up. I spent the rest of the day in a nauseated state, unable to walk in a straight line and wondering what awful thing in my brain was causing this bizarre attack of dizziness.

After another bout of vertigo later that same month, a trip to the ER and then a follow-up visit to the doctor, I was told I likely had an "inner ear issue" and was given Meclazine, which made me feel drowsy and nauseated but did absolutely nothing to relieve my symptoms. I threw away the Meclazine, walked drunkenly for a few days and eventually it went away.

Fast forward several years - I'd just had my first baby and was enjoying a week-long vacation at the beach with my family. My sister had paid for her massage therapist friend to give me a massage as a belated birthday present, so my parents took Jack for a long walk in his stroller while I relaxed on the massage table in our beach house. After about an hour in a prone, head-down position, I suddenly felt the room begin to spin and I thought "Oh, no - here it comes again!" I knew exactly what it was. When I got up from the table the entire room lurched violently, sending me into a fit of dizziness and vomiting from the feeling of instability. It took several days to shake the episode, but it went away.

I finally had the biggest attack a few years later when my daughter was a baby. I couldn't lie on my side, turn my head or bend over for fear of setting off the wild spinning of my surroundings. My doctor finally sent me to an ENT to further diagnose the problem. Why this hadn't been done years earlier is beyond me.

It turns out that I have a weird anomaly in which the part of my skull that supports my inner ear is thinner than normal. The actual bone underneath the inner ear is thin and therefore does not support the inner ear as well as it should. A CT scan also revealed signs of "chronic mastoiditis" on my left side, which is basically an inflammation of the structures surrounding the inner ear. The CT scan also revealed another bizarre thing: apparently the bony canal in which my facial nerves lie is completely exposed. In most people this canal is covered by bone, but in my face the nerves are just sitting there, waiting to be damaged by a blow to the face. The doctor said I didn't need to worry about it unless I ever sustain any severe facial trauma. Nice.

Apparently a whole group of doctors sat around a big table and discussed my case. My doctor seemed a little too excited about the whole thing. I didn't really care for the fact that my case stumped them - they really had no good answers for me. My doctor took me through the Epley Maneuver, which I'd learned about in PT school, in which you have to lie with your head tilted back, essentially recreating your symptoms over and over until they settle or stop. I was instructed to perform this maneuver myself every day for a week and to avoid any excessive movements of my head so that the inner ear could "settle down".

Amazingly - this worked and over the years I've learned to control the symptoms by avoiding certain head positions and movements. Occasionally I've had to repeat the Epley maneuver to settle things down. I no longer sleep on my left side and I can't roll over in bed quickly. I can't do a handstand - but then again, I never could, so no big deal. My only true regret is that big scary roller coasters are a thing of the past.

I'm sitting here now, feeling slightly nauseated and fuzzy in the head. I woke up this morning with that familiar spinning feeling and a sinking feeling in my stomach. Being unable to turn my head and lie a certain way is very limiting. It sucks. Epley, here I come.