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Vertigo: A common problem that left one man teetering for months and months
According to the National Institutes of Health, “more than four in 10 Americans will experience an episode of dizziness sometime during their lives.â€
By Floyd Skloot, E-mail the writer
March 27, 2009. I was fine the night before. The little cold I’d had was gone, and I’d had the first good night’s sleep all week. But when I woke up Friday morning at 6:15 and got out of bed, the world was whirling counterclockwise. I knocked against the bookcase, stumbled through the bathroom doorway and landed on my knees in front of the sink. It was as though I’d been tripped by a ghost lurking beside the bed.
Even when I was on all fours, the spinning didn’t stop. Lightheaded, reaching for solid support, I made it back to bed and, showing keen analytical insight, told my wife, Beverly, “Something’s wrong.â€
The only way I could put on my shirt was to kneel on the floor first. I teetered when I rose. Trying to keep my head still, moving only my eyes, I could feel my back and shoulders tightening, forming a shell. Everything was in motion, out of proportion, unstable. I barely made it downstairs for breakfast, clutching the banister, concentrating on each step and, when I finally made it to the kitchen, feeling too aswirl to eat anyway. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those stairs would become my greatest risk during this attack of relentless, intractable vertigo.
Vertigo — the feeling that you or your surroundings are spinning — is a symptom, not a disease. You don’t get a diagnosis of vertigo; instead, you present with vertigo, a hallmark of balance dysfunction. Or with dizziness, a more generalized term referring to a range of off-kilter sensations including wooziness, faintness, unsteadiness, spatial disorientation, a feeling akin to swooning. It happens to almost everyone: too much to drink or standing too close to the edge of a roof or working out too hard or getting up too fast.
But according to the National Institutes of Health, “more than four in 10 Americans will experience an episode of dizziness sometime during their lives that’s significant enough to send them to a doctor.†That would be approximately 125 million of us.
If it came with a soundtrack, vertigo’s would sometimes be a train’s wheels grinding and screeching on the tracks as the car turns and almost tips over. Other times it would be a treetop filled with the ruckus of rioting crows in a sudden windstorm.
I remember feeling helpless and untethered, needing to reach out for something stable to steady me but finding that there was too much give in everything I sought. Vertigo is a carnival world and I was the Human Bumper Car. I moved without authority because the simple act of shifting my head’s plane threw me into chaos. But so did remaining motionless. I was never comfortable or relaxed, never at ease, at home in my world.
But I was not alone. In part, that was because I had Beverly’s support and my daughter’s steady concern. I was also not alone because, as a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2009 noted, 69 million Americans age 40 and older, or 35.4 percent of the population during the four-year study period, had some form of vestibular dysfunction — a term that includes vertigo.
When I was struck by vertigo, I had no idea it was such a common occurrence.
According to the National Institutes of Health, “more than four in 10 Americans will experience an episode of dizziness sometime during their lives.â€
By Floyd Skloot, E-mail the writer
March 27, 2009. I was fine the night before. The little cold I’d had was gone, and I’d had the first good night’s sleep all week. But when I woke up Friday morning at 6:15 and got out of bed, the world was whirling counterclockwise. I knocked against the bookcase, stumbled through the bathroom doorway and landed on my knees in front of the sink. It was as though I’d been tripped by a ghost lurking beside the bed.
Even when I was on all fours, the spinning didn’t stop. Lightheaded, reaching for solid support, I made it back to bed and, showing keen analytical insight, told my wife, Beverly, “Something’s wrong.â€
The only way I could put on my shirt was to kneel on the floor first. I teetered when I rose. Trying to keep my head still, moving only my eyes, I could feel my back and shoulders tightening, forming a shell. Everything was in motion, out of proportion, unstable. I barely made it downstairs for breakfast, clutching the banister, concentrating on each step and, when I finally made it to the kitchen, feeling too aswirl to eat anyway. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those stairs would become my greatest risk during this attack of relentless, intractable vertigo.
Vertigo — the feeling that you or your surroundings are spinning — is a symptom, not a disease. You don’t get a diagnosis of vertigo; instead, you present with vertigo, a hallmark of balance dysfunction. Or with dizziness, a more generalized term referring to a range of off-kilter sensations including wooziness, faintness, unsteadiness, spatial disorientation, a feeling akin to swooning. It happens to almost everyone: too much to drink or standing too close to the edge of a roof or working out too hard or getting up too fast.
But according to the National Institutes of Health, “more than four in 10 Americans will experience an episode of dizziness sometime during their lives that’s significant enough to send them to a doctor.†That would be approximately 125 million of us.
If it came with a soundtrack, vertigo’s would sometimes be a train’s wheels grinding and screeching on the tracks as the car turns and almost tips over. Other times it would be a treetop filled with the ruckus of rioting crows in a sudden windstorm.
I remember feeling helpless and untethered, needing to reach out for something stable to steady me but finding that there was too much give in everything I sought. Vertigo is a carnival world and I was the Human Bumper Car. I moved without authority because the simple act of shifting my head’s plane threw me into chaos. But so did remaining motionless. I was never comfortable or relaxed, never at ease, at home in my world.
But I was not alone. In part, that was because I had Beverly’s support and my daughter’s steady concern. I was also not alone because, as a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2009 noted, 69 million Americans age 40 and older, or 35.4 percent of the population during the four-year study period, had some form of vestibular dysfunction — a term that includes vertigo.
When I was struck by vertigo, I had no idea it was such a common occurrence.
This happened to me! I was not as bad off as this guy but it was not good. I felt fine, I don't remember having had a cold or anything, and one day I reached down at the lab to pick up a piece of equipment stored below the bench and I just fell over.
From that minute on and for the next 3 months, I just fell over anytime my head was tilted more than a couple of degrees. Imagine basically falling out of a chair in the doctor's office when you shake your head "no" in response to some question. It was horrifying.
I had a bunch of tests and they put me on meclizine which did nothing I was aware of. You just don't know how much your head moves until this happens to you. It moves a lot.
WaPo
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