I’m Falling

The alarm buzzed, I rolled over, shutting off the annoying chime I set it to like I do every morning. I sat up, started to move my feet from the bed to the floor and all of the sudden it felt like I was floating. “I must still be really tired” I told myself as I put my feet on the floor and stood up. Then I was reaching for the wall balancing myself. Straight to the restroom and then back to bed, the whole time feeling like I was falling over. I send an e-mail to my boss: “Not feeling well, will work from home today.”

That’s how my Friday started. It is now Tuesday, four days after I first experienced the worst vertigo in my life, and that vertigo is still around, rearing it’s ugly head any time I try to do something quickly. Turn my head; Falling. Bend over to grab something; Falling. Rollover in bed; Falling. Normalcy seems to have come to a screeching halt on Friday. The doctor’s office was booked full when all of this hit so my wife took me to a non-emergency clinic, neither of us put vertigo into the “critical” column, ruling out the emergency room. I’ll just say the drive there involved a lot of nausea (and its results).

The staff were prompt in looking at me and quickly ruled out a neurological issue. They settled on something I had never heard of, vestibular neuritis. Essentially it is an inflammation of the inner ear, usually caused by a viral infection. There are not a lot treatment options, basically control the vertigo, nausea, vomiting, etc. as much as possible. The staff at the clinic said it could be a week or a month until it dissipates. The vertigo medication has done little to relieve my symptoms but my body seems to have adjusted to the nausea, at least somewhat.

After a short discussion, my wife and I decide a second opinion is in order and I made a follow-up appointment with my family practice for Monday night. We went and the doctor again confirms no neurological worries as well as the vestibular neuritis diagnosis. My vertigo is not dependent enough of direction to be BPPV, which has a few different treatment options. There is also a slight chance that what I have is something called Meniere’s Disease, but the doctor wants to hold off testing to see if my symptoms dissipate.

Today, Tuesday, has been a little worse than the last two days. There is ringing in both of my ears and I don’t seem as “sharp” as I did yesterday. Doing little things like taking a shower have become tedious adventures that require my full attention. I think the only way to describe it is to imagine being on a Merry-go-Round and spinning as fast as you can, then stepping off and trying to do your taxes. Now apply that to everything you do. Even this post is hard to write. Focusing is not easy when you are putting a lot of brain power into making sure you don’t fall over. I am otherwise healthy though, so when we walked down to the car to go to the office, I’m sure I just looked drunk.

I am otherwise healthy. I have to remember that. This puts on hold a lot of things that I had planned and it triples the amount of work my wife is doing on day to day basis but she has taken it in stride. We can hope and pray this dissipates quickly but if it doesn’t, we keep moving together. Well, I’ll probably be a few steps behind her holding her hand, balancing myself.

6 thoughts on “I’m Falling

  1. That happened to me following the Chickenpox. It took about 3 weeks for the spinning feeling to go away. When I got better it was about as fast as when it first hit. Hope your symptoms resolve qucikly!

  2. Stephan – Brit here! My friend’s daughter had the same thing. What worked for her was to have some kind of manipulation by a chiropractor. He made her lay down on her back. Then he moved her head slowly to the left. Waited a minute or so. Moved it back to the center (looking upwards), left it there for a minute or so, then moved it to the right, left it there for a minute or so. I think they did several repetitions.

    It seemed to work, and she has had no recurrence of the Vertigo.

    Might be worth seeing a chiropractor???

    1. Thank you Brit.

      This is slightly different than what you are describing. The movement of the head to relieve the vertigo is a condition called BPPV and has to do with crystals in the inner ear that get loose and mess up signals to the brain. My vertigo is not specific to head position, it’s all over, leading the doctors to believe it is an infection.

  3. Sounds like a virus or reaction to a virus that is effecting your ear. This sort of stuff has been going around some lately. Kinda weird. Missed you on Dots, Lines and Destinations podcast recently, although Seth did a good job with it on his own. Get well soon.

  4. I’m not sure how I landed on this blog post, but I’m glad I did! I had the exact same thing happen to me about 5 years ago. I have been completely deaf in my left ear ever since. I have since learned that had I been given a steroid shot into my ear drum within the first few weeks, I probably could have saved my hearing. I don’t know if this has resolved for you already, but if not, go see an ENT immediately. Hopefully what you had isn’t the same as what I did, but I thought I’d share just in case. Best of luck!

    1. Thank you for the comment Brian!

      I am going to follow up with my doctor when I get back from my work trip to make sure I’m improving at the rate that they would like to see.

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