Vertigo – It’s More Common Than You Think
I’m thinking you’re probably wondering why I’m writing about vertigo. It’s just not something that’s often discussed. I don’t think I ever talked about it or heard it discussed with any of our friends, and you know, at our age, we talk a lot about our aliments. This all changed about a year and a half ago when my wife had a sudden and severe attack of vertigo. Now, before I go any further, I need you to know that I’m not a doctor (I didn’t even spend the night at a Holiday Inn) so what I say here are my own observations and opinions—so reader beware!
When my wife had the vertigo attack, I was out of town, and she was alone. She suddenly became so dizzy that she began throwing up and her eyes wouldn’t focus. She somehow called 911 and she was taken to the hospital and admitted to the cardiac ward. They obviously thought she had a heart attack or a stroke. They performed multiple tests, EKG, echo cardiogram, brain CT scans, etc. Everything looked fine. After a few hours they decided it must be an infection of her left inner ear, called vestibular neuritis. She remained in the hospital for three days until she was able to walk with help. They give her some medicine, but it didn’t help. I took her home, and we began the long and arduous journey of recovery. To make things worse, six months later she also experienced the detachment of her inner ear crystals. These are crystals that come loose and sink into the canal, bending the hairs and giving out erroneous signals. Fortunately, this can be corrected by the Epley maneuver which returns the crystals to their correct position. The crystals displacement added to her problems since the damage caused by the inner ear infection remained. I can tell you that this type of vertigo is difficult to deal with and is depressing. The doctors were hesitant to give any estimate on how long the vertigo would last.
Our body is a marvelous machine, but saying it is very complicated is a gross understatement. I won’t go into a great deal of scientific detail about vertigo here but you’re free to google, oops, I mean us AI to find out the details if you want. I’m sure those of you that have dealt with vertigo have already done a lot of homework. Suffice it to say, I marvel at how smart our brain is. It can take inputs from our ears, our eyes, our body, and our movements and combine them instantly into information that keeps us balanced. When we focus on one spot and quickly turn our heads, our brain can keep our eyes focused on that spot. I know we’ve all experienced being on a ladder and feeling unsteady but, by just reaching out and touching a wall, we suddenly felt steady . . . our brain got another source of information that instantly made us more balanced. It’s when our brain starts getting bad information from one of its key sources, say our inner ear, that things go haywire.
There is not one diagnosis or treatment for vertigo. I’ve often heard that if you’ve seen one Alzheimer’s patient you’ve seen one Alzheimer’s patient. That applies to vertigo; everyone is different. Even the repositioning of the crystals is different for different patients. It was especially difficult in my wife’s case. She went to an ear, nose and throat doctor who referred her to a physical therapist to do exercises that would increase the ability of her eyes to quickly focus. We studied about cures and, as time went on, we got to the point where we would try anything, no matter how strange, just in the hope that somehow it would help. We had been dealing with this for over a year, seeing some improvement but not to a degree that she could live with long term. We found ourselves becoming very discouraged.
We finally went to a neurological specialist that seemed to quickly become invested in our situation. Our first visit lasted over an hour and a half, and she came to a diagnosis that, along with coming off of some medication, included doses of Prozac. I am grateful to report that for the last month there has been a marked improvement. To use my wife’s words, “if it didn’t improve any more than I am at this point, I could live with this”. We have hopes for continued improvement and possibly a return to normal. I write all this to give you an idea of the impact vertigo can have on your life and to make the following observation.
When my wife and I started talking about vertigo, it seemed that everyone, mostly older, either had experienced it themselves or knew someone that had. Their experiences were mostly shorter in duration but impactful. I wondered why a malady that impacts so many people, especially older people, was not talked about more and didn’t seem to have the same level of scientific study as other diseases. It seemed to me that finding ways to lessen the impact of vertigo would change the lives of a huge number of people and would offer a large “bang for the buck” for research dollars dedicated to this disease. I also thought that the longer duration than normal aspect of my wife’s experience reflected a type of vertigo that might be somewhat unique. I was very intrigued when a couple of weeks ago I read an article from a healthcare journalist that detailed her experience with vertigo that mirrored my wife’s experience. She experienced the same lack of knowledge on this type of vertigo that we did so I began to think that maybe this wasn’t a one-off type of vertigo.
I am always advocating for increasing our innovation, especially lately when there seems to be laws and regulations, enacted, or proposed, that will inhibit innovation and threaten our standing as the world’s center for discoveries that improve our health. While there are many areas that need increased focus, I think more research into the cause and treatment of vertigo might produce medicines and solutions that could benefit a huge number of people, especially older people that seem to be affected more often with this debilitating disease.
Best, Thair