For most people afflicted with vertigo, the cause is unknown. After doing some research online, I hypothesized that the ear crystals (ocotonia) in my middle ear canals had somehow come loose from their usual location (possibly from banging my head against the door jamb of my mother's car) and were now freely gallivanting around the canals on an extended sightseeing tour. Fun for my ear crystals, I presume; not so fun for me. As the ear rocks swirled, my sensitive ear nerves told me that up was down and down was up. The floor was spongy like a trampoline. I was flying!Walking without falling over became a challenge. The inside of my head quivered constantly. In the beginning, before I learned how to live with the vertigo, I felt shaky and weak. People who saw me said I looked pale and ill.
Of course, I scoured the web resources for information. I read some disheartening tales: vertigo could last days, weeks, months, or years. Luckily, the type I had was subjective BPPV, not objective. That meant I felt like I was doing the moving, rather than feeling like the world was doing the moving. (The difference between the two is profound.) I learned about the Epley Maneuver, which uses head positions and gravity to entice the crystals to return to their proper location. I started treating myself in an amateur fashion several times an hour, desperately seeking a cure.
During the first month of my affliction, I visited a doctor, who said there were some exercises I could do to desensitize my ear nerves and gave me a referral to an ENT. The ENT put me in a space chair, twirled me over and around, and sent me out dizzier than I'd come in. Clearly, there would be no easy cure for me. I've come to believe I actually have roving ear rocks in both ears, which makes it more difficulty to treat with a gravity-based maneuver.
Sleeping was a challenge. Lying flat on my back caused waves of pressure to roil through my head. I could map the ocean of fluid in my ears as the waves sloshed slowly back and forth, front and back. I was on a boat, but the boat was in my head, rocking on waves that scraped the inside of my forehead like surf on a rocky coastline. The waves felt loud, but were silent, like a wall of soundless air pressure lacking actual decibels. I couldn't make out any noise, but I was bludgeoned every time I tilted my head back even slightly. (No more crying to heaven for me.) Sleeping on my side after performing the Epley on my head seemed to help. I confess, I wasn't willing to sleep sitting upright for the 48 hours recommended by some practitioners.
Over the summer, I fought the vertigo by staying active, determined to outlast it. I went running to spite it. I found out jogging was more comfortable than walking. I guessed that jogging kept the crystals floating above the nerves; they came back down with a vengeance soon after I slowed to a walk. As fall swept in, I stopped running, and then stopped walking. As the air got colder, I didn't want to move much, because movement stirred the sludge in my ears.
Winter came; my vertigo and I reached an uneasy truce. I agreed not to move, and it subsided to a dull but silent roar. There were a few good days interspersed with the tedious unbalanced days. The trampoline walk gradually calmed. As the months went by, I gained some weight, but I began to think maybe the vertigo was starting to fade.
Enter this spring. Almost a year to the day I first felt the vertigo symptoms, I suddenly was back in the rocking boat. Surfs up!
The ocean in my head has been active these past few weeks. My hope is that this activity means the winter sludge in my ears has finally broken up, like Arctic ice in the spring, and the crystalline icebergs in my ears are on the move. I do the Epley whenever the symptoms threaten to swamp me. I hope the waves are starting to calm. They are intense, but don't last as long, leading me to imagine fewer crystals are touring my ear canals. I wish the cruise would finally end, but like any cruise, you get on and you don't get off till it's over.
I've tried to frame this year as a metaphor for the imbalance of my life, but after a while, day after day, it's hard to buy in to the notion that things are any more precarious than usual. The same conundrums plague me; maybe by now they've lost their capsizing potential. Mom lives. I struggle. Life goes on, tra la la. If my metaphysical imbalance were responsible for my vertigo, it ought to have dissipated by now, because after a while imbalance becomes the new normal.
Vertigo doesn't have to mean anything, symbolically speaking. Last year, I hit my head on a car door jamb, which probably knocked loose some ocotonia, which settled into sludge in my inner ear over the winter. Gradually, my body will assimilate the annoying little travelers. Eventually, most likely, the cruise will end. The ocotonia will head back to port and stay there, and I'll be able to do things other people do, like lean forward and backward. Like sleeping flat on my back. Like dancing (when no one is watching, of course) and jogging and walking... things I used to take for granted, not realizing how precious they were.
