Vertigo Sensation

I wake up at 3 A.M. having to use the bathroom.

Grumpy, I rush up from my pillow and stomp my feet on my wood floor. My room has only one window, and I had covered that with a blanket making it completely black inside. I stumble, wobble, wave my hands vainly trying to stabilize. I reach the wall, knock my clock clattering to the floor.

In hindsight, it was probably a good thing I could not see anything at all those first few moments.

I reach the doorknob and turn it. The hallway is lit by flickering moonlight and a greenish night-light from the bathroom. At least, I thought it was flickering. I can hardly stand. The stairway banister, the rugs, the light – it all moves incessantly to the right, jumping like a strobe. And I feel like I’m jumping right along with them, just as fast, just as out-of-control. I panic, fall to my knees, clasp my hands to my head as if to contain the frantic motion I feel and see that I know is really not there.

* * *

Thank God I was home with my parents and my brother at this time. I don’t know what I would have done going through this alone. This was my first experience of an “acute” attack of vertigo. It lasted for a whole hour – I believe it was a taste of hell. The worst part is you cannot control it. No matter what I tried, the sensations would not stop. Every time I moved my head, it was as if I had touched a bruise, poured salt on a wound, the frenzy of the motion became unbearable! Finally I whipped my head around, left to right, in mimic of the sensations I felt.

And it stopped.

Well, at least it lessened. Rather than feeling like I was on a Star Wars-style spaceship jumping to hyperspace every half-second, now it felt more like being on a tube and floating on a slow-moving whirlpool. By twist of fate, as it were, snapping my head like that was the best thing I could have done at the time.

I will tell why I felt these things in my next, and what my doctor told me to do about it.