Vertigo 

A weird name and a traumatizing thing that can happen. 

If you don’t know what vertigo is it’s basically you moving a little so fast and then the room spins out of control. 

March 13th just days before my mom’s birthday I was stressed. I was filled with anxiety and filled with the utter stress of having to get things done. It’s 1 in the morning. A headache is slowly kicking and I need medicine because there’s no way I am sleeping with this pain. So as a normal person does I throw my head back taking the meds. (I didn’t know how to write that part forgive me) I lean to chug some water and place the cup down. When I looked back up at my dark living room I start to feel off. You know when you get up to fast and you kinda just need to close your eyes and stand still for a second. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as this usually happened a lot. But to my surprise, I opened my eyes and instead of me telling some poem the room started spinning out of control. There’s a painting that hangs in the living room and even now a month later I can still picture that photo spinning out of control. I tried laying down and taking some deep breaths but the dizziness and the room spinning got to me before I was drunkenly dashing to the toilet because my body HATED IT. 

It was one in the morning and I called my parents downstairs. I was confused as ever. Hell one minute the room was spinning the next it stopped and my anxiety was filled. The worst part is I ended up getting sick a few more times that night, the worst part was again it was 1 in the morning the only thing a gal had was a piece of toast to keep the Advil down before bed. So throwing up was well hard if you will. 

I remember the next morning I couldn’t walk or even sit up for more than a minute. I remember trying to talk to my dad about how I was feeling and my eyes would just not focus every time I looked at him my eyes wandered somewhere they could literally not stay still. I was terrified and had no idea what just happened. 

Turns out with the very helpful Google that it was a vertigo attack. I had all the symptoms and in my life that I had recently from jaw dislocations to covid to wisdom teeth coming in along with stress and anxiety it made sense why it happened. 

The thing about vertigo is you really have to go to the right doctor. I was lucky that my parents had a friend that recommended gravol because if it wasn’t for them I was still be feeling like absolute crap gravol made me able to walk and make my life go back to some sort of normal but as I was saying when having or recovering from a vertigo attack you have to have a good doctor because if you’re like me and you don’t you kind of end up in this black hole. Google is a nightmare because well it’s Google but at the same time if it wasn’t for Google I wouldn’t know how to treat it and well what could cause it. 

Vertigo is such a weird thing to have because as everyone’s blog post says and I tell my friends. When recovering from a vertigo attack is basically your ear and your brain having a really bad relationship. The ear decided to tell lies to the brain and the brain is over here thinking if it should even trust the ear ever again. The whole recovery is your brain getting mixed signals from your ear and is trying to figure out what the fuck happened. All of a sudden you go from being able to tie your shoe in one shot to taking a good minute because looking down is filled with being dizzy. 

I think the worst part well the whole thing is horrible but the recovery part the worst part even though that sentence did not make sense anyways is dealing with anxiety and depression while recovering from vertigo. Vertigo recovery is almost so much in your brain as in your ears and if you’re depressed then it gets worse, if your anxiety is through the roof it gets worse, if you have a horrible headache it gets worse if you think about it because well you off-balanced and for some reason, you crashed into a wall it gets worse. That’s the hard part about the recovery is almost feeling better and then you reach down to grab something or you moved a little too fast and it’s there. 

I wasn’t going to write a blog post about vertigo but after dealing with it for a month and trying to find anything about why it happens or how to help it I thought why not talk about it because vertigo is scary and it takes months to actually feel better again and it sucks. Vertigo can happen to anyone and I just thought I would share. 

As a non-doctor who has been dealing with it for a month here is some advice I found through Reddit and other blog posts that helped me. 

1. Give yourself a break it’s a really big that can happen and you will be messed up for a bit 
2. GRAVOL on day three or four of the attack I couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes before feeling awful gravol allowed me to do day-to-day stuff and actually get back to life 
3. Get back to your normal life as soon as possible, vertigo is one of those things that just wants to make you sit or lay down all day after a day or two or three of rest get up walk do things you have to do 
4. Physical therapy – As other blog posts say this will speed the recovery of the dizziness 
5. Just have to keep telling yourself its gonna go away soon.

Like I said a billion times in this blog post, It’s scary and depressing and lonely but life happens and you have to figure it out. So I hope anyone who is going through the recovery of vertigo I wish you well and the people who just read this entire blog post confused as ever I’ll see you next blog post talking about something else I don’t know yet aha.