I woke up about 5:00 a.m., turned over to my left side, and hearing some "morning sounds" outside, opened my eyes to see what time it was. As soon as I opened my eyes, the room began to spin, and I became completely disoriented. Thank heaven I was already lying down. I thought it was bizarre, but decided I was probably caught somewhere between the state of sleep and awake, so I drank a little water (I always keep a bottle of water by the bed), and went back to sleep.

I woke up again at about 7:30 a.m. Jim was already downstairs, reading the paper, sipping coffee, and watching GMA. I started to get out of bed, when the room began twirling again. Really badly. It was like being on one of those twirl rides at the amusement park, but it was terrifying rather than fun. I thought that I would either fall out of bed or drop dead! All I could do was shut my eyes and sit still.

By the time I got downstairs (and I clutched the railing all the way down the stairs), I was also feeling queasy. I couldn't tell if it was an after-effect of the spinning, or if it caused the spinning. Jim took one look at me, and asked what was wrong! After I explained what had happened, he decided to stay home, just in case it happened again, and I needed to be seen. I soon realized that I couldn't keep anything down, but still didn't know if that was because of a virus, or because of the spinning. Honestly, I sat in terror that it would happen again, and I can tell all of you that it was a perfectly horrifying experience. I didn't know what was triggering it, so I didn't know what to do to avoid it.

Jim got onto his computer, and checked symptoms. He turned up something that sounded like it could be my problem, because the onset usually happens when changing positions in bed! It's called "benign paroxysmal positional vertigo" (BPPV). Apparently there's a temporary interruption of the sensitive inner workings of the inner ear that sends incorrect signals to the brain, and causes the spinning sensation. The inner ear essentially doesn't recognize the fact that one's head has stopped moving, so it tells the brain that it hasn't. In the meantime, I also noticed that I had a scratchy throat and my right ear hurt a little. Not anything that I would have noticed otherwise, but I was now looking for ear issues. I'd had an infection a little over a year ago, so I thought that might have had some effect on my inner ear, or maybe it was coming back again. Who knows??

Ultimately, I saw my doctor, and he thought that I might have this BPPV thing, and he didn't see any signs of an ear infection.

Today, though, I still feel flu-like, and my ear hurts. I have no clue what's going on (probably just a virus thingy), but at least I haven't had anymore spinning.

I was supposed to drive down to North Carolina this weekend (another VERY long story), but that's out. No driving or climbing ladders for now. (Not that I'd planned to climb any ladders..)