post: vertigo

Author: foosel

content/blog/2025-09-15-about-my-chronic-vertigo/cover.jpg

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+---
+title: "About my chronic vertigo"
+date: 2025-09-15
+cover:
+  image: cover.jpg
+  alt: Three stones balancing on each other on a wooden railing somewhere outdoors.
+  relative: true
+---
+
+*I finally decided to write the following post as every time I have an acute episode of my chronic vertigo
+and mention it to people, I have to explain my situation and symptoms again. So I decided to write it
+down here to just be able to link people to it instead 😉. This is **not** an attempt to get attention or pity,
+so please spare me that! 😅*
+
+I have had a chronic vertigo since fall of 2000 now. It's not a case of issues with low blood pressure ("blackness in front of the eyes") or some
+light-headedness or something like that, but rather a case of
+the same sensoric input being generated somewhere between my [vestibular system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestibular_system) and my brain as if I was on a roller coaster or sitting on
+a merry-go-around. During acute episodes this leads to problems walking, a very insecure feeling when standing and sometimes also nausea
+and [nystagmus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nystagmus), not to mention exhaustion while trying to compensate for all of that.
+
+This crap started with a really bad respiratory infection that gave me a high fever and put me into bed
+for almost two weeks. After the fever went down I had a constant vertigo. This was right during my last two years at 
+school and meant that I missed almost two months of classes and then had to get brought to and fetched
+from school by my dad for a month while I was learning to cope with this during my day-to-day and it turning less
+constant[^1].
+
+The initial diagnosis was [labyrinthitis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinthitis). When that took too long without the symptoms going away despite
+treatment, I spent a week getting a full check-through at a hospital in summer of 2001 after which the diagnosis became 
+[BPPV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benign_paroxysmal_positional_vertigo) and I was taught the usual treatment for that. With that diagnosis I went on with life, doing my prescribed exercises, 
+hoping it would just disappear one day. But when that didn't happen and was still going on in summer of 2019 I decided to get yet another full check-through and the result of 
+that was basically "It's not BPPV, but we don't know what it is, everything works like it should as far as we can see". Not a hardware issue, no wiring problems nor
+firmware bugs to see 🤷
+
+So this kinda sucks. Most days I thankfully don't notice it, and when it hits I can still handle my day-to-day
+fine in most cases thanks to a sheer ton of training 😬. It certainly helps that I can do my job sitting down 😅 
+
+The bad episodes seem to get triggered by sudden weather changes[^2], stress and illness[^3]. I so far haven't
+seen *any* connection to my food intake (thankfully). As I have a history of weather and stress 
+induced migraines, and [vestibular migraines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Migraine-associated_vertigo) are a thing as
+I learned after yet another lengthy research session, I'm now tracking my symptoms daily
+(vertigo, headache, tinnitus, nausea, plus stress & weather) in preparation for yet *another* round of 
+trying to get a proper diagnosis and ideally working treatment for this shit from a neurologist.
+
+**tldr:** It's not low blood pressure, it's not just "a bit dizzy", it's not BPPV (so Epley etc don't help).
+It might be a weird version of migraines, I'm currently tracking things in preparation for another attempt at getting to the bottom of this. 
+I won't die from it and have well working coping strategies but on some days it just plain sucks.
+
+[^1]: That's when I learned that the brain is absolutely *amazing* at compensating for broken sensoric inputs!
+[^2]: Or this constant rain-sun-rain-sun-rain-sun shit that's going on during seasonal changes now it seems 😒
+[^3]: Especially respiratory infections are my kryptonite - five days of the sniffles, ten or more of everything spinning.