and so it is~
I do eye exercises and count
and I feel hope at last……
My vestibular therapist asked me what my vertigo looks like. “Describe an episode from beginning to end,” she prodded.
Here’s how mine goes:
I cannot predict it. I have no warning. If there are any warnings or triggers or signs, I want to know what they are. I want to function through it and have ways of shirking it off so that I can go to work and live my normal day.
Mine has, every time except once when I was dressing windows on the town square in a heated area that was not the same level of the ground, begun in the morning as soon as I open my eyes. If I gaze at the corner of the ceiling, the room whooshes up like a freefalling rollercoaster – – up, up, up. Never like the tilt-a-whirl that spins (although it can be a bit like a storm tossed boat at times) or the Tower of Terror that is like an elevator that has lost all control and randomly takes you to the top floor and drops back to the fifth and raises to seven and drops to floor. No, my world just goes up, up, up. Constant upness, along with nausea – the kind that sticks around even though you wish you could throw up and move on.
The only way to handle the day is to close my eyes and try to stop the movement. They call this eye movement nystagmus, and it creates all sorts of symptoms, including a pressure headache that isn’t stabbingly painful but is annoying and uncomfortable and can leave you feeling on edge like the world is a big bubble about to burst wide open.
I can’t drive. I can’t work. I don’t get dressed. I have to steady myself to get to the restroom and back to bed, and that is all I can do. Watching television is out of the question – that is just torture to try to see something and focus. Reading is impossible. Even listening to an audiobook is quite nauseating trying to put mental focus on anything. I feel like I’m moving even when my eyes are closed, and if I’m fortunate enough to get to where I can feel still, I don’t dare do anything to set it in motion again – – I just sit with my eyes closed and breathe. All. Day. Long.
The way it goes away is with a full night of sleep. A nap doesn’t do it – it has to be extended sleep as an overnight length.
And after that, the next morning, I’m back to me again. I get dressed, eat breakfast, and drive to work……and wonder when the next episode will be.
Fortunately, I now have hope for turning things around through vestibular therapy. I’ll share some of the exercises I’m doing in tomorrow’s post. For now, I’m focusing on a purple popsicle stick with an M on it, moving it right and left and up and down, tracking it with my eyes while I hold my head still. And I’m counting to ten.
Common Threads 