Vertigo?

ben_of_marlow

New member
About 2 weeks ago, I lay down flat on the floor to do sit ups and the room began spinning and I got nauseous like I had been on a roller coaster. Following that I continued to get dizzy changing positions, or rolling over in bed, and felt dizzier than normal when getting up out of bed.

I saw a neurologist who examined me and stated that I tested normal in every way. He sent me to a cardiologist who stated that he really did not think that my symptoms were heart related but he gave me a prescription for Meclizine (12.5 mgs/8 hrs) and decided that I should have an Echocardiogram and a stress test just to be safe.

4 days ago my symptoms changed. I began to feel "waves of dizziness" every 5-10 minutes that I only felt on my left side. This was accompanied by change in sensation in my left arm and leg. After 3 and a half days of this I decided to go the the ER today. (The neurologist is on vacation and nobody could tell me difinitively what to do so I went) These episodes are short...perhaps 20 seconds total, then I return to normal until the next episode.

In any event at the ER they ran a Cat scan which was normal and did blood work which was normal. The Dr reiterated that this is vertigo, I should take the medication (which I had not done) and that I should follow up with the neurologist who may wish to do an MRI.

My question is simply has anyone else had Vertigo which they experience on only one side. I was frankly afraid that I was having mini strokes but the Er doc seemed very comfortable that this was not the case.

Does this sound like vertigo that anyone else has experienced? And for the record, the echocardiogram was normal, and the stress test is tomorrow.
 
It does sounds like benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. BPPV is caused by debris collected in the inner ear. They're called otoconia and usually made up of calcium carbonate (a.k.a “ear rocks”:D). When we move are heads, the ear rocks rattle around in there sending fake movement signals to the brain. You can have otoconia in one ear and not the other, hence the one-sided symptoms.

I forget I have it till I get another attack of it and the spinning starts; turning over in bed, throwing my head back to laugh, even looking down while reading will set it off. Sometimes it's not spinning but a wave of dizziness that seems to come from nowhere.

I also see things "moving" out the corner of my eye. I thought it had something to do with floaters (even though what I saw moving was often a real object) but my ENT doc said it was the BPPV. The movement I see is the sensation of me moving, not the object.

If the vertigo doesn't go away by itself (it often does after a few weeks) you might want to see an ear, nose and throat doctor - there are real treatments available (not just anti-nausea pills:p) like the canalith repositioning procedure or vestibular physical therapy. There's many different, sometimes subtle, causes of BPPV and treatment depends on a precise diagnosis. Finding a doc who specializes in inner ear disorders would be a good idea.


http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/dizzinessandvertigo.html
 
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