Vertigo, Pt. 2

No quotes today, nor movie things. Just a quick, "yes, I'm still alive," kind of post.

Well, I was wondering. So far it's been pretty reliable, but I was trying to be optimistic, thinking maybe I'd make it through this year with out getting slammed with a bug. No dice. For the past few years, sometime between December and February, I end up getting horribly sick. I'm not sure if it's a stomach flu or what, but it's damn reliable. Two years ago it struck in February, last year it hit the weekend right before finals (which ended up being a horrible mess - a two day fever over the weekend, followed by another handful of nasty vertigo days during finals). This year, it hit yesterday. I was up at five thirty in the morning, hunched over the toilet. What fun. Repeat roughly every half hour until around noon - that was my day.

Now that the throwing up is over, the vertigo has settled in. Used to be, my vertigo wasn't particularly tied to getting sick, it just cropped up whenever it wanted to. Now, only when I get sick. On one hand, it's nice because that means only once or twice a year instead of half a dozen or more. On the other hand, it means having to deal with throwing up and having a wicked case of the dizzies all at the same time.

What the hell am I talking about? Good question. I didn't even know until I was in high school. All I knew was that every now and again, I'd spend a few days having to be really careful about walking into bright lights, turning my head too fast, etc. It wasn't until my doctor sent me to an ear/eye specialist that I had a name to go with it, Vertigo. It's an inner ear problem that is infamously unpredictable, but which tends to lessen as the person with it gets older.

Put another way, it's kind of like getting migraines in that movement and bright light tend to be bad things. Instead of pain in the head, though, I get bouts of feeling like someone's grabbing my head in one hand, my stomach in the other, and squeezing with both. Not fun. Each time veries in its severity, one time I couldn't sit down or stand up without having to hold onto something. Other times, it's just a brief moment here and there. Fortunately, this time is fairly mild. Still a pain in the ass, but it could be worse.

Added bonus: computer monitors for some reason really aggravate it.