Rocks

I have rocks in my head. Long suspected but now proven. You do too.  But, mine were loose.

My rapid interaction with the floor a couple of weeks ago, left me with Benign Paroximal Positional Vertigo. That's a lot of letters for slight dizziness when getting out of bed.  Not a big deal but a little unsettling when the ALS gift of precarious balance becomes weightless frolic when getting up in the middle of the night.

My well documented physical therapist nodded knowingly and said "sit right here". Rob and I are learning about this ALS thing but he is a dizzy expert.  He put a mask on my head that blocked all light from my eyes and had a camera that showed on a monitor what my eyes were doing. When he turned my head to the sides, my eyes moved back and forth quickly. "Aha" says Rob!  "I can probably fix that."

Here's the quick non-scientific story. There is a little pouch in our inner ear that has little tiny rocks in it.  They are supposed to stay there. Apparently when I hit the floor, it shook some of my rocks loose and they went rogue, wandering around the tubes in my ear creating minor havoc.  When I changed position dramatically, like sitting up in bed, the little rocks started rolling and told my brain that I was doing the twirly dance when actually I was innocently sitting on the side of the bed prayerfully gripping the sheet. Rob's solution - put them back where they belong. He knows how to do this. Have you ever played with one of those infuriating marble maze things where you have to roll the marble thru a maze with holes in it by turning knobs on the side. That's what he did with my head.  He said to just relax (I trust him) and proceeded to, with confident gusto, move my head around to send the rocks home. There are two places the rocks can go and of course mine were in the harder place to correct, so I knew it might take a couple of goes at this maze. I left with instructions to not move my head up or down for 24 hours. (Try it.). Got up in the middle of the night with my brain dancing to some cosmic ditty. Drat. Got up in the morning. No twirling!  My rocks were back!  When I went back to PT, Rob checked my eyes again. No jiggle. He was pleased too.

I still have rocks in my head, but now we are dancing together.