The Hitchcock Syndrome

 

I haven’t been online much lately, as a matter of fact, I haven’t been anything much lately. After Christmas, I had an incident in the bathroom. I bent down to pick something up and woke up a few seconds later on the floor, pinned between door and wall. 

I hadn’t eaten much the day before and my stomach was still empty, so I decided I needed food and blamed the lack of it for my dizzy spell.

I didn’t mention it to anybody. I become a hermit crab when something is wrong, the contrary to my husband, who turns into a drama queen when he is sick.

A few days later, right before New Year, I started to feel dizzy when I looked into bright light, then, I had another dizzy spell in my workroom when I reached for something high up on a shelf.

At night it bothered me most, whenever I turned from one side to the other -what I seem to do frequently. Then I woke up and it felt like the word around me was shaking for a few seconds. Not just that, I had a weird sensation that my eyes were “wiggling” somehow.

Between Christmas and New Year, what a great time to get sick. My doctor was in vacation, any other doctor I called was booked, and they told me to go to the emergency room.

This is so wrong in this country. You can’t get an appointment with a doctor or specialist for weeks -sometimes even months, and it forces us to go to an emergency room in a hospital so that we end up with a bill in the thousands, instead of a few hundred bucks. Doctors should be forced to keep some time open in their appointment books for emergencies. Don’t you think?

I don’t believe in over billing. Screw that, so I didn’t go to the hospital!

My New Year started on shaky ground -so to speak. I felt uneasy walking, held on tight to the railing when I went upstairs. I couldn’t even sit at my computer. That light was bothering me as well.

Possible brain tumor said WebMD, possible nonsense said I.

A customer of mine is a nurse. I called her, explained my symptoms -over the phone- and she hesitated at first, but told me to go to an Otolaryngologist. (A what?)

“Call an ENT,” she said and so I did. First, nobody had time, then I found a doctor who could squeeze me in and so I went.

He turned my neck and my head in every position possible and then when I was laying down, it happened right then and there. I got dizzy and my eyes felt like they were wiggling.

“Ah…Vertigo,” he said.

“Ah…Hitchcock” I replied.

 

Ver·ti·go – ˈvərdəɡō = a sensation of whirling and loss of balance, associated particularly with looking down from a great height, or caused by disease affecting the inner ear or the vestibular nerve; giddiness. (Dizziness, Lightheadedness, Loss of Balance)

The crystals in my left ear are floating around and are the source for my dizziness and interesting enough, one of my eyes really wiggles (or shakes) for a second.

“What do we do?” I asked, and he showed me the Epley maneuver. He did it with me a few times and sent me home.

“Sit and sleep upright for 48 and don’t move much,” he said and, “Repeat the maneuver alone if it’s not better after that. Come back and see me in two weeks.”

I can fall asleep in my chair anytime I want to,  have been found sleeping there numerous times -mostly during TV sessions that didn’t get my full attention- but guess what? I can’t sleep in my chair if you tell me to do so.

At 3 am, I was cranky like a little child, and I was stomping my inner foot with gusto. I wanted my bed. I grabbed all the pillows I could find and piled them up in my bed. When I decided it was high enough for my ear crystals, and I went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning surrounded by pillows everywhere -just not under my head. I had managed to get rid of each one of them and had slept through the rest of the night laying flat like an iron board.

Mission “repeat the maneuver” took place.

I repeated it two more times and then I finally gave in and spend 48 hours in my chair, sleeping, resting and complaining. I slept an hour, cursed for two and slept for another hour. That pretty much sums it up.

I am still careful but haven’t felt dizzy in a couple of days. I learned to sleep with more pillows now -just as a precaution for a few months.

It looks like I am back to normal.

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