Disclaimer: The following post appears to have been inspired by illegal substances. Well, this is simply how my mind works sometimes. I do not have the good sense to halt and reconsider before clicking Submit. Please form your lynch mob accordingly.
OK, I’m normally pretty good with words, but maybe some of you folks can help me out here.
I’m trying to help describe my experience – to friends who still aren’t really sure what it’s like, and also to the doctor next time. Would some of you folks be kind enough to read the remainder of this post and then tell me, in your opinion, how “clear of a picture” it gives you?
Suddenly, a poor imitation of Dave Barry descends upon the scene and possesses the Thread-Starter for precisely one paragraph:
(Or, annoy the nearest person by forcing this upon them, and say to them, “Bob, obviously you should feel obligated to pretend you care about people you have never met, so read this and tell me if you understand it.” If the person’s name is not Bob, you should address them as such anyway; They will implicitly understand that “Bob” is simply a generic persona in a hypothetical discussion and react accordingly.)
George returns … despite popular demand. No increase in coherence or sanity is noticed.
Qualities of me / my “dizziness” are:
- Non-spinning (not “true vertigo”), no throwing-up
- No false visual perceptions of light, movement, etc (e.g., surroundings don’t appear to “move”; I don’t imagine I am “in motion”)
- No syncope or being off-balance (I never faint, fall, lose balance, etc)
- Essentially constant, not episodic (few activities are OK, as is sleeping, but otherwise, ever-present)
- Intense yet indescribable (“inner vertigo” – somewhere in the head, it feels like something’s going berserk, but vision and balance don’t show any such false signals, so it all feels restricted to a pure sensation, rather than something concrete – whereas “the room is spinning” is definable)
We once had a riding mower for our big yard. When riding it, I felt fine, but when I got off, I felt lightweight, like I weighed ten pounds. I’d be lightheaded in a “spacey” sort of way, and when I’d look up at the sky, it would literally look to me like the entire sky was being pulled away, sliding off into space.
That bizarre illusion is long gone, but have you ever ridden a vehicle that, when you got off, made you feel like something “just wasn’t right” upstairs? Better yet: When you were young, did you ever spin around in circles in a room? Remember how the room would initially “spin,” but even after the spinning stopped, there remained that distinct weird, non-visual “residual” lightheadedness?, like something inside you was still disturbed?
Remember that feeling, the “invisible dizziness”, the indescribable quality of it because all the visually noticeable sense of dizziness had evaporated? Well, that’s quite like it. It’s “there,” but … it’s not. It’s just an abstraction. It’s like looking at a work of abstract art, but perceiving it as thought it was a photograph with perfect focus.