Archives for posts with tag: vertigo

Pain, Vertigo, Errands to Run

December 21, 2024 //
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It’s the day of Winter Solstice. Happy Solstice.

I woke during the night, and it was the strangest thing. I turned over, and the vertigo that washed over me woke me abruptly. I thought it was near time to wake up anyway, so I laid still and quiet, and quite straight and flat on my back, waiting for the vertigo to pass. Once it did, which seemed rather a long while later, awake in the darkness, I checked the time. 02:55. Definitely not time to get up. I made myself more comfortable and went back to sleep. There was a Billy Joel song stuck in my head, which seemed peculiar enough to wonder why, as I drifted off to sleep.

I woke again later, properly time to get up and head for the trail. My vertigo spun my senses as I tried to orient myself. Damn it, why now? It passes and I sit up, aware of the intensity of the pain in my neck and back. Rough. I’m feeling pretty fucking mortal this morning and find myself worrying about making things as easy as possible on my Traveling Partner should my mortality catch up with me unexpectedly… Time to focus on paying off debts and fattening up savings and having things properly in order… But… For fucks sake isn’t it always time for those things? I sigh quietly and get up. I’ve got shit to do, and the morning begins here, now.

My day begins in earnest with the kitchen sink backing up first thing. What the absolute fuck?! Are you kidding me with this shit?! I snarl quietly to myself, aggravated with someone’s carelessness. Eggshells jammed into the drain, but not down into the disposal, and the strainer cup placed over those, so it wasn’t evident that they were there. Of course they didn’t go through the disposal that way. G’damn it. I try so hard to be quiet in the morning but I definitely can’t walk away with the fucking sink backed up. I roll up my sleeves and clear the clog. So gross. First fucking thing in the morning, too; I’m barely fucking awake and I’m not ready for this bullshit. Fixed. I wash my hands and head out, still annoyed.

The drive to the trailhead is quiet and pleasant. By the time I get parked I’m over being mad about the sink, but I definitely wish the Anxious Adventurer would take a little more basic care moment to moment, particularly in the fucking kitchen and in the shop. That kind of careless bullshit gets shit broken, or gets people hurt, or creates risk of injury or food-born illness. It’s too easy to get it right. It irritates me that he makes extra work for me so often. (I know he doesn’t mean to.) I sigh quietly. It begins to rain. My tinnitus is loud in my ears. My neck and back ache ferociously, a column of pain rising from my waist to the base of my skull. Fuck pain. I don’t feel much like walking in a drizzle in the pre-dawn darkness, uncertain whether my vertigo may flare up again, so I meditate, and write a bit, and wait for a break in the rain.

I’ve a couple errands to run for my Traveling Partner this morning, and think about stopping in town for a quiet coffee and a visit to the art supply store… No reason, really, it just sounds fun and satisfying. It’s a nice day to do something for myself, too.

The rain continues to fall. I listen to the raindrops on the car roof and sit quietly with my thoughts until it’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, Frustration, gratitude, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, winter

Then The World Went Spinning Sideways

November 24, 2020 //
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I woke too early this morning, got up to pee, went back to bed to grab a few more minutes of precious sleep. So tired. Ready for it. I laid down, instantly comfortable, and started to drift off…

…The world seemed to spin madly off its axis unexpectedly. Vertigo. Fuck. How bad would it be this time? I held on to the edge of the bed (no idea why it reliably seems this should help, it doesn’t, really), hoping it might just clear up right quick and perhaps I’d still sleep… No such luck. I rolled ever-so-carefully onto my back, reminding myself continuously in my head that the spinning isn’t real. I reminded myself to remain calm. To breathe through it. To let things settle down, patiently. This makes about half a dozen serious vertigo “events” I’ve experienced since the first one, which was, as I recall, back in 2014? 2015? Before I moved into my own place. After menopause, but before the headache came. It doesn’t matter in the moment that I’m enduring the vertigo, just gives my mind something to play with while I wait it out… like a string, offered to a cat. I remind myself to follow up with my GP that the vertigo is still “a thing”.

Best I can figure, with what I know, I most likely slept in one posture for too long, that may have pressed my neck “too bent” in one specific direction (in this case, tilted away from my left side toward my right, as I slept) and when I laid back down (on the other side, head bent in the other direction)… vertigo. It remains sufficiently rare that I count and make note of every occurrence. It’s problematic mostly because, from my own perspective, it is scary as fuck. It passes, though.

I moved on with the morning. Greeted my Traveling Partner. Made coffee. Read the news, briefly (long enough to be certain I didn’t find anything word actually reading waiting for me). Then face getting on with the work day ahead of me.

When I sat down at my desk, I leaned left (and tilted my head, also left) to turn on my laptop – vertigo. Fucking hell. I sit upright. Posture very correct. Very still. Breathing. Waiting. Holding the edge of my desk. When it passes, I go back to sipping coffee and start the work day.

It’s worth noting that I’ve recently been trying to get back to working on fitness goals. I enjoy playing Beat Saber in VR for some of my exercise – super fun. I started getting back into that over the weekend after some months away from it (the move, then time just got away from me). It’s rather taxing on my neck, and seems the likely cause of this recurrence of my vertigo. I find myself bothered that it has become “my vertigo”… a thing I deal with often enough to consider it a thing I deal with. Fuck.

Well… damn. I guess it amounts to another opportunity to practice healthy practices. To take better care of the woman in the mirror. To take my fitness needs seriously, but also approach them with consideration and care. To be patient with myself. To be thorough about taking note of changes in my health generally. Adult shit.

The day has begun in earnest. The sky is gray, the day chilly. My arthritis pain is noteworthy, but I am distracted by my concern over the vertigo, and overlook it for now. I need more coffee. There is a long holiday weekend ahead, and it’s already time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, health, Healthy Living, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, more than a little bit of bitching, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices

Another New Beginning

June 29, 2020 //
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Well, today is properly “the day”. The computers will be shut off, packed in their boxes, and prepared for the move. The last of the significant packing and boxing will be done, in preparation for the moving truck (that’s tomorrow). We took a day to rest up and hang out, yesterday, and got to bed “at a decent hour” to ensure we have taken care of these fragile vessels to be at maximum readiness for a couple days of significant manual labor. I slept restlessly. I’m not surprised. I won’t be surprised if my Traveling Partner’s sleep was also restless; we’re both excited, and eager to get the move done and start this new chapter in our lives.

I woke early. It was an attack of vertigo that woke me, the room seeming to spin like madness, in spite of my closed eyes. I opened them and attempted to hold back my nausea by grabbing the edge of the sofa, where I was sleeping, when I woke. I straightened my body with great care, and stifled the panic that comes with the vertigo, reminding myself it is only a sensation, not representative of any sort of “reality” outside my own impaired sense of balance. I breathed through the panic. Exhaled, relaxed, double-checking with each breath that my spine was straight, and that my muscles were relaxed. I waited it out, reminding myself to make a note for my next doctor’s appointment. I already know better than to attempt to get up and walk when I have vertigo. lol

Once my vertigo passed, I got up and made coffee. I have an early morning errand, then back to the house to pack things into boxes, alongside my Traveling Partner. He may not even be up when I leave. I find myself hoping he rests deeply, and maybe even sleeps in. We can have coffee together when I get back. 🙂 Tomorrow feels peculiarly far away, and also almost upon us. Funny how my sense of time and timing works, and how subjective, and even abstract, it can be. Even the vertigo seems to simply add a surrealist twist to the already peculiar moment-between-moments. I sip my coffee contentedly, and with some caution; if the vertigo isn’t entirely and completely cleared up 100%, I can’t safely risk driving, at all. That would fuck up any number of details of our careful planning; my morning errand involves letting contractors into the house to do some “before we move in” things we’d like to have done. 🙂

Receiving the house keys was a pleasant moment… I somehow managed to return to the rental (definitely no longer feels like “home”) without taking even one “share-worthy” photo of our new home… just pictures of smoke detectors, appliances, the fuse box, the FiOS box… basically just detail photos of things that need batteries, or that we’d want to know what the model numbers are, and those sorts of very practical details. lol I took one selfie for my Traveling Partner of my big big smile with the forest beyond our deck in the background, and sent that to him before I got in the car for the return trip. With the Independence Day weekend just ahead, there feels like more pressure to get things done “on schedule” than truly exists. I breathe. Exhale. Relax. I sip my morning coffee. I smile, and glance at the time.

Move out priorities often differ from move in priorities. We’ve held back from packing the things we reliably use every day, because we’re still using them. At some point, all that has to be packed, too. The moving in needs also revolve around what we need first, but the needs change a bit. I don’t think our computers will be a high priority until after our bedroom is ready for sleep, our kitchen ready for cooking, and our bathrooms ready for personal care. Entertaining ourselves has mattered greatly leading up to the move out. The move in, though, is more than a little entertaining (as well as laborious), without connectivity, without computers, without videos, music, or games. I find myself feeling far more relaxed that with previous moves, and prepared to be comfortably flexible with the different approach we each take to the move. My Traveling Partner has a plan for the move. I have a plan for the move. Our plans overlap in spots, but emphasize different details. I work consciously on “staying in my lane” and trusting he has details handled, just as he does for the details I’m handling. It feels fun, and emotionally safe, and secure. Team work. I sit smiling quietly, sipping coffee, grateful for this partnership, and this (so far) easy move.

I’m finding it a bit hard to finish my writing this morning…but it’s most definitely time to wrap it up, and begin again. 🙂

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Categories Brain Injury, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5

Welcoming the Traveler

August 24, 2014 //
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Today my traveling partner will return home. I will likely be asleep when that time comes, and with work tomorrow that is as it must be. I’m content that he will be here, and I will see him tomorrow. I will spend some portion of the day quietly making our home ready for his return. My at-home partner will head out to spend an evening gaming with friends, and she’ll return with our traveling partner, and a house guest who will be among us for at least a handful of weeks. In principle, I’m entirely comfortable with that. In reality, my PTSD may raise its head to express a different opinion on the matter, at some point, and the knowledge that this is a potential part of my experience would have once set me up for failure by spiking my anxiety level simply from contemplating it. For now, I’m calm and relaxed, and looking forward to sharing time with a new friend; I have skills that support my needs, these days, and find myself generally able to practice them when I need them most. Growth. Change. Choices. It all matters.

I will paint today. It feels good to say it without also anticipating having to tidy it all up, and put it all away, simply because it is Sunday, and I’ll have to spend the week working elsewhere. I’ll pick up enough to be tidy, but without disrupting work in progress. What a luxury!

I’ve had an exceptional week with my at-home partner. I feel good about life and love. I’m eager to be in the arms of the traveler-returned-home. We have each taken time to work on what we needed most to deal with, address, or resolve within our own experience. We’re each, based on the things we’ve said to each other, made great strides along our individual paths. These are beings I love, cherish, and enjoy; being together matters to me, and although love endures time away, it thrives in company. I am eager to see where love takes us now.

It was a beautiful day for love. Today is too.

It was a beautiful day for love. Today is too.

This morning was an odd one. I woke quite early, around 4:00 am, and as is my practice, went ahead and got up long enough to take my morning medication and go back to sleep for a while. I was groggy and a bit off-balance, not fully awake, and none of that felt amiss – it felt pretty normal for being not-quite-awake earlier than I wanted to get up on a Sunday.  That wasn’t the odd part. It got weird when I woke up a bit later, around 6:30 am; I was incredibly dizzy. I don’t mean ‘dizzy like I turned my head too fast’. I was dizzy like I’d had a LOT to drink, dizzy as if I were wasted on alcohol, or ‘still drunk in the morning’ dizzy… it was a very specific and quite severe amount of dizziness. (I don’t drink these days, and haven’t for a long while.) Vertigo. I rarely experience it, but I’m familiar with the concept, and it didn’t freak me out. I had turned over in bed, possibly quite quickly…it’s never had that outcome before.  I waited for it to pass, observing the effects calmly and soothing myself with deep relaxing breaths until my balance was restored; the room spun wildly for several seconds, perhaps as much as 2 minutes. I was grateful in the moment that I hadn’t also tried to get out of bed straight away.  That wouldn’t have gone well.  I make a mental note to make an appointment with my doctor; taking care of me means following up on changes in my health that may be a cause for concern, rather than blowing them off and hoping for the best. I jot down some quick notes about the experience, and the moments afterward, to share with her.

I consider the return of the traveler in the context of also taking care of me, and as so often happens with me, the ideas collide and get jumbled up together. I find myself considering what I can do to take care of me, each day, as a traveler returning home, myself. I leave the house each day to work, returning later with little remaining of the day. There have been many days in my life when that homecoming hasn’t been an easy one, or particularly pleasant for me, because I didn’t do small things in the morning to be ready for my own return. I think it matters; I am starting the day fresh in the morning, and I will return home tired and needing to relax and take care of me at day’s end. Mornings when I take time to quickly make my bed are followed by evenings returning home to a space that looks more orderly. This nurtures and supports something within myself that I value. If I toss my towel on the bathroom floor after my morning shower, it’ll be there when I come home, most likely, and the resulting sloppiness and chaos are unpleasant for me, where the moment of effort, the small action, of either hanging it up to dry, or dropping it in the laundry, would likely be unnoticed in the morning routine. These are simple things. I look around my room and observe the disorder that has crept in over time: a couple stacks of papers unfiled, unsorted, and balanced on books, a small assortment of miscellany that hasn’t been properly put away, my still unmade bed…I can do better. I have. I even prefer it.

Small details matter.

Small details matter.

I smile, still relaxed, and enjoying a personal change; there’s no self-directed judgment or criticism, no nastiness or blame. This is new for me. I’m just sitting here contentedly observing opportunities to treat myself with greater care and courtesy, and contemplating how to best make that happen straight away – because it matters to me, and I matter to me. When did I get here? I like this perspective; the view is pleasant.

Today, yoga, meditation, laundry, housework, and some aquatic gardening – and painting.  Today is a good day to enjoy change.

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Categories Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, Uncategorized