OWH's Topic That Will Never Die XXIII

#26,979
#26,979
volwindy said:
But then at what point do you feel okay, is it good to go again? Or are the episodes done and good for awhile?
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Well, this is BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo), which is a come-and-go thing. It usually hits me 1-3 times a year and lasts 3-4 weeks each time. But the first day is the doozy. The rest is much milder and is just irritating as hell. (One of the tests for it involves squirting warm water into your ears, one at a time, which for me triggers not only the vertigo but also a hound-dog reflex of wanting to dig at the affected ear.)

A big part of it is knowing what's happening, how the course will run, and setting aside any fear (and intense nausea) resulting from your balance senses perceiving one thing while your eyes tell you differently. That's when the teeth gritting comes in: there's this panicked "OMG, the world is turning sideways, and you need to follow it!!" which has in the past resulting in me rolling out of bed in an attempt to counter this message. (Like I said, it often hits when I wake up, so I don't have my ducks in a row yet.) It was awful the first few times, until I learned the pattern of the episodes and knew how to ride them out.

When it hit when I was driving, or the other rare times it has hit during the day and I'm walking or whatever, I guess it takes about 3 minutes of intense arguing with the inner-ear messages plus fighting down the nausea, and then another 4-5 minutes of just breathing in and out and being irritated at "here we go again." And then I carefully go about my business, or more likely, home to ride out Day 1.

- Sometimes you'll hear this called "top-shelf vertigo," as the most common trigger is looking tilting your head backwards and rolling it from side to side (as opposed to keeping your head upright, but turning it from side to side, for example.) So in my early years in "medical records", when we still had paper charts, we had 7' high shelving full of folders of individual health records that we had to periodically purge just to keep open space for new records. Purging involved tilting your head backwards to view the top shelf, and then rolling it from side to side while looking for file numbers. That's the same relative position your head is in on your pillow while in bed, so flipping from your right side to your left (my personal trigger) means that you really, really want to keep rolling to your left and off the bed onto the floor.

For pilots, rolling your head means the roll axis, while turning your head is the yaw. o_O :p
 
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#26,980
#26,980
VolNExile said:
Well, this is BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo), which is a come-and-go thing. It usually hits me 1-3 times a year and lasts 3-4 weeks each time. But the first day is the doozy. The rest is much milder and is just irritating as hell. (One of the tests for it involves squirting warm water into your ears, one at a time, which for me triggers not only the vertigo but also a hound-dog reflex of wanting to dig at the affected ear.)

A big part of it is knowing what's happening, how the course will run, and setting aside any fear (and intense nausea) resulting from your balance senses perceiving one thing while your eyes tell you differently. That's when the teeth gritting comes in: there's this panicked "OMG, the world is turning sideways, and you need to follow it!!" which has in the past resulting in me rolling out of bed in an attempt to counter this message. (Like I said, it often hits when I wake up, so I don't have my ducks in a row yet.) It was awful the first few times, until I learned the pattern of the episodes and knew how to ride them out.

When it hit when I was driving, or the other rare times it has hit during the day and I'm walking or whatever, I guess it takes about 3 minutes of intense arguing with the inner-ear messages plus fighting down the nausea, and then another 4-5 minutes of just breathing in and out and being irritated at "here we go again." And then I carefully go about my business, or more likely, home to ride out Day 1.

- Sometimes you'll hear this called "top-shelf vertigo," as the most common trigger is looking upwards and rolling your head from side to side (as opposed to keeping your head upright, but turning it from side to side, for example.) So in my early years in "medical records", when we still had paper charts, we had 7' high shelving full of folders of individual health records that we had to periodically purge just to keep open space for new records. Purging involved tilting your head backwards to view the top shelf, and then rolling it from side to side while looking for file numbers. That's the same relative position your head is in on your pillow while in bed, so flipping from your right side to your left (my personal trigger) means that you really, really want to keep rolling to your left and off the bed onto the floor.

For pilots, rolling your head means the roll axis, while turning your head is the yaw. o_O :p
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If you haven't sliced your palm open trying to slide a patient's chart onto a shelf that didn't have room for it, you haven't lived.
 
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#26,981
#26,981
vollygirl said:
If you haven't sliced your palm open trying to slide a patient's chart onto a shelf that didn't have room for it, you haven't lived.
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I was so happy when we went electronic!

If for no other reason than that surgeons could no longer throw metal-sided charts at us when they were pizzed about having to get their stuff current. Yeah, fling those electrons at me, dude!
 
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#26,982
#26,982
VolNExile said:
I was so happy when we went electronic!

If for no other reason than that surgeons could no longer throw metal-sided charts at us when they were pizzed about having to get their stuff current. Yeah, fling those electrons at me, dude!
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I worked for internists at a time when we had books for each doctors and typed out a schedule for each one. Once we got computers, that's when the eyes began their decline.

I could literally feel my eyes telescoping between the computer and the patient sitting at the back of the waiting room.
 
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#26,997
#26,997
VolNExile said:
Well, this is BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo), which is a come-and-go thing. It usually hits me 1-3 times a year and lasts 3-4 weeks each time. But the first day is the doozy. The rest is much milder and is just irritating as hell. (One of the tests for it involves squirting warm water into your ears, one at a time, which for me triggers not only the vertigo but also a hound-dog reflex of wanting to dig at the affected ear.)

A big part of it is knowing what's happening, how the course will run, and setting aside any fear (and intense nausea) resulting from your balance senses perceiving one thing while your eyes tell you differently. That's when the teeth gritting comes in: there's this panicked "OMG, the world is turning sideways, and you need to follow it!!" which has in the past resulting in me rolling out of bed in an attempt to counter this message. (Like I said, it often hits when I wake up, so I don't have my ducks in a row yet.) It was awful the first few times, until I learned the pattern of the episodes and knew how to ride them out.

When it hit when I was driving, or the other rare times it has hit during the day and I'm walking or whatever, I guess it takes about 3 minutes of intense arguing with the inner-ear messages plus fighting down the nausea, and then another 4-5 minutes of just breathing in and out and being irritated at "here we go again." And then I carefully go about my business, or more likely, home to ride out Day 1.

- Sometimes you'll hear this called "top-shelf vertigo," as the most common trigger is looking tilting your head backwards and rolling it from side to side (as opposed to keeping your head upright, but turning it from side to side, for example.) So in my early years in "medical records", when we still had paper charts, we had 7' high shelving full of folders of individual health records that we had to periodically purge just to keep open space for new records. Purging involved tilting your head backwards to view the top shelf, and then rolling it from side to side while looking for file numbers. That's the same relative position your head is in on your pillow while in bed, so flipping from your right side to your left (my personal trigger) means that you really, really want to keep rolling to your left and off the bed onto the floor.

For pilots, rolling your head means the roll axis, while turning your head is the yaw. o_O :p
Click to expand...
Thanks for explaining!
 
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#26,998
#26,998
We are on our way back from Charleston. Had a good time celebrating my parent's 50th anniversary and getting donuts before Glazed closes down for good. They did pre-orders today, no walk-ins and they closed pre-orders down after 1.5 hours l, which upset some people. Kevin's aunt said they had sold 1400 during that time. 😲
 
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#26,999
#26,999
volwindy said:
We are on our way back from Charleston. Had a good time celebrating my parent's 50th anniversary and getting donuts before Glazed closes down for good. They did pre-orders today, no walk-ins and they closed pre-orders down after 1.5 hours l, which upset some people. Kevin's aunt said they had sold 1400 during that time. 😲
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Amazing show of support. Can't imagine the emotions.
 
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