diagnosis vertigo

Friday evening I took a shower after swimming. When I got out of the shower I had no real will to stand, so I laid down. I had a terrible time getting up, so after a couple of hours I forced myself to get up, get dressed and stumble to the canteen for dinner. Dinner was uneventful, and quickly followed by bed (9pm). The next morning I was incapable of rising. Truly. After a couple of hours of trying, I finally made it to a sitting position from which I corrected papers and planned lessons for another couple of hours.

You see, I felt like I was in a dingy on the ocean in a storm...not something conducive to standing, let alone walking. The day was stormy, I gathered my bag and rain coat and took the small speedboat ferry to the other island to teach. I had a juice at the bar. It didn't help.

Trying to do a self-diagnostic, I figured it was something to do with the heat and lack of sufficient vitamins and trace minerals in my diet here. I ate something. I drank more juice. I didn't feel any different.

I taught one class, sitting down for a lot of it. After the class I had a long break...and decided I just wasn't capable of teaching in this condition. It took me fully half an hour to decide this. I just don't miss classes. I've missed three days of classes in 3 years of teaching. I'm the one that always covered for other teachers....but I couldn't.

Back on my own island, I slumped over A's (our Human Resource officer) desk and asked what I should do. I felt that this was not normal and I should see a doctor. He seemed surprised. Surely I was just tired? No. Definitely not. This is not normal. Everyone was quite willing to believe it was a hangover- but I hadn't been drinking. (I drank a lot at the staff party some 3 nights before...being non-drinkers, they thought maybe that was it).

There's a terrible irony to being so sick that you have to see a Doctor, and having to take a boat for 40 minutes to an hour to get to one. The seas were rough that day besides...

The Doctor did a few things- blood pressure, follow the finger, close your eyes and stand up...which all lead him to the conclusion that I had neurological based vertigo. In short, I was dizzy. HIS idea was that I should stay in the hospital for a day or so, so that they could give me some injections and run some tests. I didn't feel happy about that from a "you're dizzy" diagnosis. He would have been welcome to do a blood test, I figured it was something to do with my blood and minerals anyway, but injecting me with things when he had no idea what was the cause...that was going a bit far. He explained then that he thought it was probably fluid in my inner ear. Wha-wha-what??

He sent me to the ear specialist who did some hearing checks and came to the same conclusion, although she consented to prescribe some vitamins with trace minerals as well. She gave me some medicine which she said should clear it up, and the dizziness should stop within about 24 hours.

Yesterday I was still dizzy, but was upgraded from a dinghy to a dhoni (local fishing boat, big enough for two fisherman to live on- barely). Today, well, it's more like that slight dizziness you have when you are too tired. Discombobulated.

Who knew that a little water in the wrong place could upset your whole universe?