Aging and dizziness and motion sickness
I guess these make sense to me, with motion inputs going into the brain in so many different ways with no reference point for the brain. I used to ride the amusements like crazy -- loved them, any and all. Then about 13 years ago I got on an antique merry-go-round with my parents and we all were green on that thing! Pretty funny how we age. Not.  But maybe that dizziness of mine was not just from aging? I was only in my 30s at the time. About 20 years ago I got hit in the head with a basketball and spent 5 full years with no sense of balance. I went to the doctor because I felt like my eyes were closed and I was rolling the top of my head around in figure eights. But because it started 2 weeks after the accident they (all) said there was no connection between the injury and the symptoms. Hmmmmm ok... I am still unconvinced about that to this day, and regardless of their learned opinions and in the absence of any other suggestion I'm sticking with the head injury theory. Anyway. When I was in the ER those many years ago for that rolling sensation as this problem started to become apparent, part of the test was to see if I could do the "Tandem Walk"; that's just walking heel-to-toe. I couldn't do it! I was amazed. I kept falling to the side. I always had a pretty good sense of balance up until then (while not an athlete I had been an avid water skiier at one time and an avid bicycler until then). I was treated to many expensive tests. I had the pleasure of my first MRI back when those machines were not as spacious and roomy as they are nowadays. They had to put sheets over my arms as they shoved me into the hole so that I didn't stick on the sides of the machine. I put my arms in my "lap" but they said I won't fit that way, I had to curl my shoulders up and put my arms straight down on top of my body to fit in the hole. I didn't have glasses on and I'm blind as a bat without them, but they had a mirror above my head so that a normally sighted person could see out along their own feet. All I could see was a crescent of light and I had no idea what I was seeing. Then I wiggled my fingers and the light went out as I felt something hard above them. Then I put it all together; I realized that I was completely filling the tube minus about an inch over the top of my fingers. That crescent of light was all the room that there was. Kinda scary. After the tests and visits with a neurologist that I didn't connect with, I was diagnosed. My dizziness was vertigo. What's vertigo? Dizziness. Thanks. Actually there was a lot in between the tests and the not-really-a-diagnosis-diagnosis. The MRI identified a congenital defect called Arnold Chiari Malformation. Essentially my brain was pushing down into the spinal column. This diagnosis was confirmed by the neurologist by his taking a safety pin (yes, an actual safety pin) and testing my sensory reception around the head and then jabbing me very hard whenever/wherever I told him that I didn't feel it, which I didn't. I guess he thought I was kidding. I went to a neurosurgeon who studied the films with a micrometer for many minutes and said he didn't think I had an Arnold Chiari Malformation, but it was close. He then took the films to a radiology conference and they gave the same consensus. I guess the radiologist who read the MRIs the first time found exactly what they were looking for. So that's how I wound up just being dizzy. It's amazing how much we depend on our sense of balance for things. For instance I couldn't carry a cup of coffee and not spill it unless I was looking right at it. As the body shifted around, without inputs from my middle ear I guess my brain had no idea how to tell my arm to compensate for the shift in orientation. I didn't even realize I was doing this until a friendly colleague "mocked" me walking down the hallway staring at his hand. I realized what he was doing and then what I was doing, but I tried to be a little less conspicuous about it. Another thing was I could no longer tell if the car was going straight down the road without looking. I know that's funny on the surface of it, but really what that means is I had to be 100% vigilant about lane position all the time; I couldn't feel by the seat of my pants if I was veering even at a fairly sharp angle. The second neurologist I found was a nice guy. Even though his non-diagnosis didn't please me I knew it wasn't personal... they just didn't know the cause. After a year he said "Well, you seem to be feeling a little better, it's not getting any worse on examination." Another year later I was feeling a little better and asked about a prognosis, and he said: "Well, you'll hopefully continue to improve and after you've gone a year without symptoms we'll say you're cured." Well, there ya go. It took 5 full years before I could perform the Tandem Walk and once I could I considered myself just about done with this thing. I still don't have the best balance in the world; but as my dearly departed physician Uncle told me during this "The body has more ways to compensate for balance than almost any other system. You'll find a way." So at the age of 50, 20 years after all of this began and not in super physical condition I took up motorcycling. I had ridden a motorcycle back before I was married and before the accident. Let's see if I can do it. It wasn't easy taking that first ride and my motor skills aren't what they used to be but I eventually became comfortable riding again. Then I took a riders course a couple of weeks ago. I was by far the person with the weakest skills at the beginning of the course. I lacked confidence that the others had. I was way too timid "behind the wheel" in the saddle. By the end of the course I was much better. Then I took the course evaluation, which requires all sorts of low speed balance tests -- and I passed! I actually did not score the worst in the class, either -- I was in the middle of the pack. I wouldn't have cared if I had scored the worst, it's just that I improved so much in just half a day. Confidence that I hadn't felt in 20 years. So that's my story. That's why I'm so pleased that I can ride a motorcycle again after all these years. I still have a long way to go to improve my skills and confidence, but I know it can be done. Someone has to replace Evel Knievel  |
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As an RN, and also one who worked neuro for years, I enjoyed your tale of dizziness, (not that it happened, of course!) also the responses from medical personnel; and how you worked at it and have regained so much. The body has it's flaws, but some of the compensatory actions are pretty amazing  |
| GOOD FOR YOU I FELT THE SAME WAY WHEN I STARTED RIDING AGAIN AFTER 20 YEARS HAVE FUN BE SAFE |
| What side of the head did the basketball hit you? I'm so happy to hear all went well with the motorcycle class...happy riding. |
| Thanks for the comments! The basketball hit me flush on the left side of the head around the temple. It had been thrown very hard. It broke my glasses and one observer said that my head had snapped way back. |
| Wow Ron, what a story - and nice recovery. I hope it remains to improve for you and you thoroughly enjoy some biking, how adventurous. So much of what a neurologist does is in the realm of "Dr. House". My boyfriend is a neurologist so we have some crazy discussions about neurology.....the brain and nervous system can be so complex even to those that study it their whole lives. The first thing that came to mind though when reading your story - it can often be missed and people will go their whole lives with vertigo but the treatment is simple. BPPV - benign positional vertigo. They can do a simple test for it (tilting a table with you on it, nothing invasive). It can come and go. A simple manipulation by a neuro or phys. therapist can correct it most of the time. But this is all projecting of course. Hope it doesn't come back - seems they never really figured it out confidently or completely. |
Ron wrote: Thanks for the comments! The basketball hit me flush on the left side of the head around the temple. It had been thrown very hard. It broke my glasses and one observer said that my head had snapped way back. The reason I asked you this is it reminded me of some of things I've read about brain injury...your' looking at your hand when you're carrying something. That is one of the things that my niece, who recently had the stroke, needs to be trained on. Regarding the brain injury, My oldest son was 2 1/2 when he fell down the basement stairs, from the very top step. He seemed ok, but a few days later, I found him laying on the floor in his bedroom white with lips turning blue. I thought he had swallowed something. Anyway it turned out he had a Grand Mal Seizure. He had petite mal seizures from there on for a number of years, but were finally controlled through medication, which took 6 months to find the right combination. Anyway, the dr never did find out why he all of a sudden had the seizures. I always felt, even though the dr told me I was wrong, that it was from the fall. The seizures were coming from his left frontal lobe...seen at that time on an eeg. The way he fell down the stairs, that part of his head did hit the stair. So he was on meds until he was 10yrs old. He had to be seizure free for 5 yrs before they would take him off. At the time he should have come off the dr decided that he should stay on a bit longer, but I insisted that we start weining him off and we did. He never had a seizure again and went on to achieve a Master's Degree in Business. My point being is drs are not always right. Medicine is a science and science is a "guess." |
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