<\/div>For the third time in a decade, I’ve found myself rendered helpless by intense vertigo. I don’t know the underlying cause, other than the vague “This sometimes happens to people over A Certain Age” answers that Google gave me. I have to say that of all the illnesses I’ve experienced, vertigo is the least miserable and most ridiculous.<\/p>\n
Also: While researching this, I discovered that this condition is called “vertigo”. In the past I’ve always called it “dizziness”. I thought that “vertigo” had to do with fear of heights. But according to Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n “Vertigo is a symptom where a person has the sensation of moving or of surrounding objects moving when they are not. Often it feels like a spinning or swaying movement. This may be associated with nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulties walking. It is typically worse when the head is moved. Vertigo is the most common type of dizziness.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n That perfectly describes how I spent a good chunk of last week. I stumbled around the house, desperately trying to mediate the argument between my eyes and inner ear regarding which way was up. My inner ear was in the wrong, but I’m used to relying on that data to keep myself upright. I spent almost a full day listing to the left and walking into the left side of door frames every time I tried to pass through. It was all sort of embarrassing and vaguely slapstick.\u00a0<\/p>\n By Thursday I just gave up and started crawling around on all fours. Falling over isn’t dangerous when you’re already that close to the ground. Just to keep things weird, I spent the next few days running a low<\/b> temperature and falling asleep every two hours like Bilbo.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is just as debilitating as other types of periodic illness like the flu. I didn’t get any work done and I spent most of the time in bed. But unlike the flu, it’s not actively painful<\/b>. A flu is a miserable thing to endure, and you spend every waking moment wishing you could fall asleep again. But with vertigo I could keep myself comfortable by lying on my side, closing my eyes, and keeping very still. It gets boring, sure. But I’ll take that over the torments of a chest cold any<\/b> day.<\/p>\n
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