You May Feel A Little Spinning...

For a number of years now, I have suffered through a barrage of various strange maladies.  None, however, have been as crippling as my vertigo, balance, and motion sickness.  If fact, it has become so much a part of me that Father Bob actually mentioned it on our wedding day as he delivered the homily!

The proverbial ‘they’ say that motion sickness should become less frequent and severe, as a person gets older. The opposite has happened with me.  It has gotten progressively more aggressive with age (like ailment, like host?) and it has started to creep into my daily life in such an insidious way that I find myself wobbling at the blackboard as my students tease me about having too much to drink in order to deal with their zoo-like behaviour. Sure, sometimes it is laughable, but more than anything it has become a serious nuisance.  So finally my ENT specialist set me up for the penultimate of hearing and balance tests.  It took 3 months for Toronto General to find an appointment for me. Then two weeks ago, I finally set off for my tests. 

God bless my sister.  In recent years we have become medical support for each other.  She braved heading into the city with me at an ungodly hour in order to be on time for my 8:30am appointment. Thank goodness she did, because by the time I was exiting the hospital I felt like a child who had enjoyed one too many trips on the teacups at Disney!

I was the first to be tortured, I mean…tested that morning.  The quartet of tests that are performed at TGH are not available anywhere else in southern Ontario, so the waiting room began to fill with patients from all over the province.  My lovely but deadpan nurse was named Heather.  I am a joker by nature, and dear middle-aged Heather was a hard audience to crack. I had been warned that one of the four tests would make me ill, but I could never have been prepared for what was to come over the next four hours. First our host Heather escorted me to a chamber that, by the time I was finished, made me feel as though I might have been kin with the victims of Chinese water torture.

I took my seat on a raised bed with an inclined headrest. First, she shook my head in her hands.  That’s right, she literally took my head in her hands and shook it back and forth. That in itself was enough to get me spinning.  Then she sat me on the edge of the bed and tilted my head back over the bed rapidly and repeatedly.  Kill me now? No, no, there was more.

Perhaps I will change formats for this one, humor me would you?

Queen of the Torture Chamber: Now, lay back on the bed and we will start the test.

Me: Ha! And here I was thinking we had started.

Queen of the Torture Chamber:  Hum. Well, no. So, you are going to lie on your back and I am going to rush water into your ears to change the temperature of your inner ear. You will get a rush of warm water and then a rush of cold into your ear. I will do this in both ears. I am going to ask you some questions; don’t worry about the answers.  Just answer them to the best of your ability. You will feel as though the bed and/or the room is spinning. 

Holy shit! Are you kidding me?  She’s going to make me feel the spin? F**K Me! After that she rushed what felt like a million liters of water into my brain.  With each rush I tried to answer the questions; really, I did try.  However, by the fourth rush of water I became almost incoherent.  Questions like, “Name all the fruits you can think of” resulted in answers like, “Kumquat, Orange, Pickle, Hose… Oh, God….”. Then it all stopped.  The mistress of the fire hose that had been rinsing my brain was silent. Then, those fateful words came from her mouth, “Do you think you could handle one more? I’m getting some soft results from one of your ears and I’d like to see if they are correct”.

All I could do was nod. Then I agreed to the last blast to my ears as long as it meant I would never ever return to the torture chamber.  When she was done she helped me to my feet.  The whole world was spinning and I needed to be sick.  I practiced the controlled breath meditation that I have become so good at to control losing my stomach when the spins come.  Thank goodness I had had enough forethought to not ingest anything in the last 12 hours!

I exited the room with the help of Heather, and made my way down the hallway toward the waiting room.  The look on my sister’s face was priceless.  “What the hell happened in there?”, she asked.  I couldn’t answer for fear of opening my mouth.  I could not risk interrupting the breathing.  I could see the horror on the faces of the people in the waiting room. Then finally I mustered a few words. “I have never experienced anything so awful in all my life.  I need to go to the powder room.”

Once I returned from the ladies room I was exposed to a series of heinous hearing tests that lasted about three hours. I was force to tolerate repetitive ticking at brain shattering decibels. I was asked to repeat indiscernible words at ridiculous volume levels, and I even had the pressure of my ears tested by a machine that my have sucked out a portion of my freshly washed brain.

By the end of the testing I had cracked the hardened Heather. “Well, you made it!”, she said reassuringly. I replied, “My only solace about the way I feel is that I am sure I am not the worst you have seen”. She smiled and took a deep breath. Really? Was I really that bad? Good gracious.

As my sister helped me gather myself together to leave the hospital I had one final awful realization; I was going to have to take the elevator to the ground floor!  On a good day even a short elevator ride would make me woozy, but this was going to be one hell of a ride.  With residual water still sloshing around in my head, I braved the ride.  The elevator only stopped twice on the way down but the cardiologist we shared the ride with looked a bit concerned by my awesome pale gray colour. 

When I finally hit the cold breeze outside the hospital I began to feel a tiny bit better, but the truth is that it took me a few days to really get myself back together. I will see the specialist in two weeks to hear the results.  At this point, any news is good news; I am desperate to have some information and be able to move on with a plan of attack. Until then, it’s back to the homeopath and acupuncturist for my monthly tune-up!