On Friday I had an inner-ear infection. I’ve never had one before. I’ve heard people complain about these, but I always figured it was like an earache, only – I dunno – maybe it hurt more or something? Turns out inner ear infections don’t hurt at all. At least mine didn’t.<\/p>\n
What happened was that my inner ear (both ears, I guess) stopped working, and I lost all sense of balance. And I do mean ALL.<\/p>\n
Every kid has spun around in circles until they were so dizzy they couldn’t stand. This was the same feeling, only it was more intense, and it was constant<\/em>. It was actually kind of scary, since I couldn’t stand or sit up. I wasn’t sure how long it would last. <\/p>\n The slightest movement would make me nauseous. It was like my ear was telling me I was spinning, but my eyes were telling me I wasn’t. I found that if I lay on my side in the dark and didn’t move, and if I had a fan blowing on me, then I wouldn’t be nauseous. It was like my inner ear was saying, “Hey, we’re spinning!” and because I could feel the moving air and I couldn’t see the room, I could just go with it. “Yup, we’re spinning. Whee.”<\/p>\n It only lasted about 12 or 16 hours. Once I was able to stand up<\/em> without throwing up<\/em> it got to be sort of amusing trying to get around the house. I thought, “I don’t need my inner ear. I can just judge balance by looking at the floor.” Sadly, this doesn’t work. I walked in a weaving side-to-side motion, and more than once made a left turn into a wall for no reason. <\/p>\n Which brings me to the following question:<\/p>\n Taste, Touch, Smell, Sight, and Sound. Why isn’t balance included in our list of senses?<\/strong> I promise you, life without balance is more debilitating than life without hearing. It’s way<\/em> worse than life without smell. I would put balance just behind sight and touch in order of importance. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Friday I had an inner-ear infection. I’ve never had one before. I’ve heard people complain about these, but I always figured it was like an earache, only – I dunno – maybe it hurt more or something? Turns out inner ear infections don’t hurt at all. At least mine didn’t. What happened was that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}