The Time I Lost My Marbles.

As the title says, there was a time when I lost my marbles. I know that many of you are reading this and saying to yourself that this is not news. Others are thinking that I am making light of mental illness. Neither is true. This is my experience with Vertigo.

  One day a couple of weeks ago, Melinda and I were out for our morning walk. We stopped for a few pictures on the way and as we left our favourite trail to rejoin the road, I felt dizzy. My vision was affected by it as well, and I soon developed double vision. I decided that I should return to the house and maybe think about a trip to the ER. You see, I thought at the time that I might be having a stroke.

  In the 5-7 minutes that it took us to walk back to the house, I found that I could no longer walk a straight line. When I looked ahead of me, my point of view flickered back and forth like a poorly rendered 80's video game, and if I looked down at my feet, I veered sharply to the left. The decision to go to the hospital was a foregone conclusion at this point.

  I changed my  clothes and as I tried to make my way to the car, I started to vomit with every move of my head and the world was spinning around me. Melinda drove me to town to visit the hospital, and I have to say that I never realized how many corners our roads took, but every turn led to another round of dizziness and vomiting.

  We arrived at the hospital to discover that I couldn't walk. My balance was completely gone and I couldn't get out of the car. Melinda went to the ER and asked for a wheelchair and that got their attention. The nurses were familiar with me, they had seem me walk in with broken bones, pieces missing and things sticking out of me, so if I couldn't walk it might be serious.

  I got checked in and proceeded to be sick for the next two hours, that made four hours of illness. There was nothing left and I finally broke something and started to bring up blood. This was starting to get serious for me. Finally I was given an anti-emetic, and I only had to deal with the dizziness.

  The ER doctor arrived and looked at my eyes, and determined that I had BPPV(Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo).  He stressed the Benign part of the name, but at that point I was doubtful.  I had entered the point in this illness that I was sure I was going to die and was scared that I would live. 

  I was lucky in that the doctor was familiar with this illness and performed what I later discovered was called an Epley Maneuver. This involved quickly laying down with your head turned and then rotating your head to the other side, pausing between movements. 

  Is seems that the disorder is caused by small crystals in the inner ear triggering a feeling of movement that is not seen by the eyes. The conflict between what your ears and eyes are telling your brain overloads your senses as it tries to compensate and the vertigo sets in. 

  The maneuver listed above is designed to re-seat these small crystals to a place in the ear where they don't cause any problems, and must be done several times a day until the symptoms disappear.

  These microscopic crystals, called otoliths are composed of calcium carbonate, the same chemical make-up as limestone and marble. So I now joke that I have medical proof that I have lost my marbles. 

  Luckily for me the symptoms lasted only a week, with most days having only one episode of Vertigo. I also consider myself lucky that they decreased in severity as time progressed. I posted on Social Media and was surprised to find out the number of people that had experienced this before. I feel for each and every one of them and for any that continue or will experience this in the future. 



This blog is part of a writers group exercise that we are challenged to do. WE are given a word, and challenged to write a blog post about that word. The word this week was "marble". I had started writing a completely different story when I experienced this, and it seem appropriate to tie all of the strings together.