Spent about an hour in EMDR trying to make the fight-or-flight go away from this week’s joy. Moderate success. Then, off to the doctor. His theory is that there’s a problem with a tiny, tiny electric guitar in my ear. Usually the guitar just strums gently, its strings floating in a slow stream like Monet’s lilies. It sings a happy song that tells my brain that I’m in balance and that my stomach is okay and does not need to be inverted and emptied. Occasionally a chunk of Masonite floats in and crashes into the strings and the guitar starts playing a shitty Ted Nugent song. This causes the brain stem, cerebellum, and other parts of my brain to decide that I’m off balance and have just eaten something nasty. The result is vertigo and explosive vomiting.

Eventually the chunk of Masonite sticks to the banks of the stream or moves on or dissolves and the problem goes away. People get it because they throw their heads backwards, for example in the sink at the hairdresser’s, or on a pillow on their beds. I hadn’t realized that flinging my head back was a hobby of mine.

Of course there’s nothing much to be done about this. One treatment actually consists of flinging your head about in a very supervised manner at the ENT doctor’s office until the Masonite comes loose, but this causes the symptoms to come back in full force even if it works. That sounded awfully Victorian to me.

Since excess fluid in the stream where the tiny electric guitar sits can cause this problem or make it worse, he wants me to take a diuretic, which is a twofer because he also doesn’t like my blood pressure. I don’t like my blood pressure either, but then again I spent the weekend either dry-heaving or being betrayed and/or menaced by mall goths, so maybe it was just a tad higher than usual. But I don’t care if I pee a little more. I’m also supposed to take 50 mg of niacin a day, because that might help too.