This evening, I ran across this article about how little the medical world understands about vertigo. The article shares a personal story about how this writer had to take a leave from her regular job, went to doctor after doctor to get a diagnosis and they finally settled on vestibular migraines where you can spin and spin without gettting a headache.
My journey started with Migraines at age 9/10. I had no idea what was happening. I didn’t understand how my loss of vision in part of my field of view was the beginning of a life-long challenge.
I didn’t know that some of my childhood experiences could be a precursor to things to come. Like the article mentions, I did get car sick from time to time. But! I loved roller coasters and I remember rolling down hills with my friends, and getting dizzy but recovering as quickly as others. Still, I couldn’t watch movies that had the camera effect of rotating around the subject. I would close my eyes and ask friends to tell me when the effect was over.
I never knew what was a migraine symptom and what was just body changes. Even when I had a TIA (small stroke) after a workout in 2018.
My first significant vertigo experience was working at my desk on the computer 15 years ago. Sure, I had positional changes that from time to time made me dizzy, but this was me sitting still, doing my job, and all of a sudden the world was off kilter.
I went back to the doctor and while my MRI showed brain damange there was nothing wrong that would cause dizziness. No doctor even suggested the concept of vestibular migraines, they just kept throwing med after med on top of med instead of a diagnosis.
I had to pay the bills and my profession was training. That meant travel, unfamiliar cities, hotels, and a varying diet. One day, when I was in Canada must outside Toronto, I was teaching a class of students on software when, in my brain, the floor angled uphill to about 35 degrees. I grabbed a chair and called for a 15 minute break.
In my job, I can’t just call it quits and go lay down for the rest of the day. The customer paid for me to be there and I was in another country, I couldn’t just reschedule. I trained from my chair for the rest of the day and then crashed in my hotel for the rest of the night.
I know that my clients would be kind and considerate, but I knew that rescheduling would be more than my gritting through a rough day.
One year, I was at a fall operations conference where I woke up at 4 in the morning from a sound sleep with vertigo. I was lying down flat and still I was spinning. I laid on the hotel room floor in the hopes that it would subside. Instead, the spinning got so bad I dry heaved for 3 more hours. I had to cancel my morning meetings because I couldn’t even stand up without feeling like I was going to vomit.
When things finally began to subside, I called my husband and told him I was going to get in the shower. If I didn’t call him back in 15 minutes, I was in that specific hotel and room to get me help. I made it out of the shower and finally down to the conference by lunch time. I was spent and while I was there in body, but I was not there in mind or spirit.
Some schools of thought find that the jaw and the ears are so close together and this can cause issues with vertigo. I had braces from age 10 to 14. From that work, I ended up with TMJ caused by my orthodontist correcting a cross-bite and making my bite so small I had no room for even my tongue.
I went to chriopractors, physical and massage therapists, mental health therapists, I tried TMJ treatment, and after the world began to open up again after the pandemic, I found a new dentist and we tried TMJ treatment again. We made some progress, but with my mouth being so tight, there was only so much they could do. To address the teeth in my head being so tight, I went back to orthodontics. I have been in braces for 20 months. My teeth are now a bit futher apart, and I know that vertigo is, at least partly, related to my jaw, because each adjustment either moves me into or out of more regular bouts of vertigo.
It is funny… simply rolling over at night without having to press the nerve bundle between my eyes brings me joy. Small triumphs…
Vertigo and Tinnitus are no joke. They can break your mental health and interrupt your life.
That said, each day I wake up, I hope that today might be the day where maybe someone will figure out what causes this and bring me a solution before my last day.
All I can offer is my wish for resolution. So much still needs to be heard and marked for study. Hugs.