This month, I’m writing posts from prompts in the Writing Down the Bones Card Deck by Natalie Goldberg, shared with me by my friend Barb Edler of Iowa. Today’s prompt gets us outside. We are to take a walk – just a slow walk, one step at a time……and then to return and begin with “What I Didn’t See….”
Vertigo
elevator drop
days are quicker to live out
than tilt-a-whirl days
What I didn’t see was anything standing still. It’s been a week. My slow, one-step-at-a-time walk happened from the conference room at Griffin RESA back to my car after a resurgence of Vertigo I thought was over – after making it only a half hour into the workshop session happening from 8:30-3:30. I left, dizzy and nauseated, at 9:00.
Vertigo had me in a spinning head lock that wouldn’t turn loose.
After years of living with its intrusion into my life with no announcement that it plans to pay a visit, I’ve often been asked to describe what it is like to suffer from this condition that medical professionals still find mysterious and undefinitive still in 2025. It sounds so cliche to reply, “It’s different for everyone, and no two bouts are really the same.” Because that same thing could be said of the flu or a stomachache or a sinus infection.
But let me try to describe what I mean about Vertigo and the way it happens to me. most commonly. Come along on this walk, of sorts, with me.
My frequency of Vertigo attacks started increasing from about two full blown episodes a year to maybe 4 ripply ones and a couple of full blown ones. The full blown ones always, always start at the beginning of the day. I wake up, but when my eyes open, I feel like I’m falling down a circular tunnel, kind of like how Alice in Wonderland must have felt when she fell in that hole, but there’s no wondering about this. It’s for real, and it will pull the rug right out from under your feet.
On these days, I can’t walk straight, so I feel my way to the bathroom and back to bed. I always pray that because I know these days will come, that when they do I’m home and not having to get up and be out of a hotel room by 10:00 or travel on a plane or by car or be somewhere that would be expensive to miss – like a conference or appointment of some sort. On these full blown days that I describe as Elevator Drop days, there is no functioning. I can only either lie down or sit up, depending on the nausea, close my eyes or leave them wide open, depending on the dizziness, and turn the temperature down.
I had my first attack when I was 12 years old, and I remember it clearly. I didn’t know what had happened. My bedspreads on my twin beds were 1970s bright bold sunshine yellow, bright Caribbean blue, and bright lime green. There were dots and designs all over them, and I had a small wicker nightstand between them with a lamp, an 8-track tape player, and a selection of 8-track tapes, most notably Donny Osmond singing Puppy Love. My rug was a shag green and blue, and I had just gone to tell my mother that I wasn’t feeling well one morning when I was returning to bed and suddenly it felt like someone had cut the cable in an elevator and the whole room started going up, up, up, up, up and I was falling down, down, down, down and could not stop. I fell to the floor between my beds and pulled myself back up. For the rest of the day, I could not open my eyes without feeling sick and endlessly plummeting.
As the years passed, I remember the same thing happening to both my parents. Dad had Vertigo days, and Mom had migraine days. Dad would lie on the couch for two or three days on end, and Mom would go into the bedroom and pull the heavy curtains shut to block out all light, lie flat on her back with a wet cloth over her head, and threaten to choke anyone who made any noise. I seemed to fall more into the camp of Vertigo, even though later I learned in my vestibular therapy sessions that vertigo is often referred to as a vestibular migraine. Apparently, there are crystals in the ear that form and break up, and when this happens it causes the fluid in the ears to tell the body that it’s dizzy. I do the Epley Maneuver, and when I do, it sounds like small aquarium pebbles gritting together when I turn my neck, and it makes me feel even sicker than before the maneuver. That’s the double-edged sword in all of this — that the attempts of things like eye exercises to stave off the vertigo often make it worse before making it better. The medicine to treat it basically knocks a person out, so going anywhere or trying to work is out of the question either way.
The tilt-a-whirl days are different. These can come on in the middle of the day, and I noticed the first time that ever happened to me, I was standing in the Chamber of Commerce window on the town square in downtown Zebulon, Georgia arranging canvases for National Poetry Month in April. The sun was bright, the heat was grueling, and I climbed a ladder a few rungs up and stepped into the display window to move the easels around. When I looked down, the world had tilted as I stood mere feet higher than the sidewalk and felt like I was on a high dive with a fast merry-go-round attached to it above a concrete pool with no water in it. I did not yet know that tilt-a-whirl days do not always end like elevator drop days once a full night of sleep has been had. Tilt-a-whirl days can stick around for a couple of days beyond the initial half day.
I get up the next morning and see that often times, things seem like there is a flame under them, the way it looks when a candle has rising heat and things move and ripple back and forth in that heat. I call these Jello Jiggles. These happen when you’re looking at a door frame or an object in a room and suddenly it looks like someone thumps it and it’s Jello. Only instead of moving like Jello, it’s much faster, like one of those spring doorstops that dogs run into and scare themselves half to death with the surprise noise they make.
I can at least function a little on tilt-a-whirl days , and sometimes I even get comfortable for a few minutes – – but inevitably I will find myself in a space where there is not enough air flow or it feels too hot or I turn my head a certain way and BAM! It’s back again. And then I have to get home from wherever I am. I take deep breaths for air to try to calm the nausea – – in through my nose, out through my mouth in a slow motion like blowing through a straw.
I wait until the wave of nausea and dizziness passes, and then I make my way to the car. I turn on the air conditioner full-blast on the coldest setting and take about 25 of those deep breaths. In. Out. In. Out. Slowly. But I do not tilt my head back as my mother would often do, closing her eyes to shut out the light. I keep my nose pointed straight forward and avoid any sudden movements. I take out my Vertigo essential oil and put a few drops on a Kleenex, wave the Kleenex like the queen waving a handkerchief to dry the oil, and place it over my nose and take a few deep breaths. This doesn’t fix the dizziness, but it sure works wonders for the nausea.
When things have stopped most of their moving around, I grip the passenger seat next to me with my left hand as I steer with my right. It doesn’t really make the world stand still, but it tricks my mind into believing that the road and sidewalks and mailboxes are not actually a swinging bridge – – that I can drive on it and won’t go plunging. And if that does not work, I wait longer and try again. And if I feel it coming back on again as I drive, I pull over. I know how to turn on the flashers and wait it out, even if there is not a great place to pull over. I also know to keep my bottle of Meclizine handy so that if a cop comes up, I can explain that I am just trying to get home to take my vertigo medicine and am waiting for the ground to stand still. Because there is no way I would pass a sobriety test walking a straight line with vertigo.
What I now know after complaining that they came to cut all our trees down when it was time to harvest the timber on our Loblolly farm is that there is a silver lining – the sky – which was hard to see at vast expanse when the trees blocked it. Nothing moves up there when there are no clouds clouding the way. When I get in the driveway, I can put my window down and, without tilting my head too far back, raise my eyes to the blue skies. There’s nothing there to tilt or fall – – and it tricks me into believing that I’m grounded. Sunglasses keep the brightness at bay so I can have the blank canvas of sky all to myself, where everything is still.
My left eye feels pressure behind it, on the outside section closest to my ear. It feels like someone is tightening a screw in there, and sometimes I feel tiny prickles on my orbital bone just a finger’s length from my ear. I hold my 3 middle fingers on my left hand up in front of the air conditioner as if I’m doing a Scout’s Honor gesture and then press them on the orbital bone under my eye. Immediately, this brings relief to the pressure even though it doesn’t last long. Sometimes, it feels like my ears are wanting to fold down as my sense of hearing performs an involuntary strain to keep noise out. Those are moments that I understand why my mother wanted to choke us for making noise.
All I can do is wait out the day as unproductively as ever clock watching can be. I can listen better than I can look at anything, so reading and writing is most often out of the question. Watching a movie can make it worse, as I’m looking into a lighted screen but hoping to keep the room dark. An audiobook is a good option for these days. I can’t look at the corner of a room – – a fixed point on a flat wall is a good friend. Sometimes I can lie down. Sometimes that makes it worse, so I have to sit up. Sometimes I can recline. Sometimes that makes it all worse too. Each time is different. Vertigo is different for everyone, and no two bouts are the same.
Now. About that walk and what I didn’t see. It is never about the physical things that are missing or present. It’s always about what’s around the next curve – or what isn’t. In so many ways, the not knowing is what makes it all doable – the small steps of this moment and the next without having to see the entire road map that may hold relief or may hold worsening. For today, I see the blue sky and not the wobbling horizon.
It’s easier that way, the not seeing.
Common Threads 