Tag: wtf

Sometimes these maneuvers are performed while you wear a vibrating headband.

The likely diagnosis for my big adventure on Sunday is Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. I gave a cute metaphorical description of it before. Basically little rocks fly around where they shouldn’t in tiny structures in the ear and make people dizzy and nauseous, and sometimes other effects. There’s no reason why it occurs, nor any reason why it stops. It’s just one of those things. Unpleasant but not deadly.

There are a number of things to do about this, and I’m doing two: taking 50 mg of niacin a day, and taking a diuretic. (Excess fluid in some ear part or other can set this off too, apparently.) But that’s not all!

If this keeps happening, I can try one of two Liberatory Maneuvers for Vertigo: the Epley, and the Semont. I picture them as two old grumpy men like Statler and Waldorf on The Muppet Show.

This is the Semont Maneuver:

semont maneuver

And this is the Epley Maneuver:

epley maneuver

This is fabulous stuff. Immediately I forget that I’m ill, and I imagine myself in an ancient office full of phrenology heads, giant clamps, perhaps a van de Graaf generator or two, with an elderly German man grasping my head harshly with gloved hands and flinging me around as I vomit explosively on his hapless assistant, yelling “JU MUSST REMAINEN SCHTILL!” until finally the tiny bit of calcium that’s been tormenting me comes loose and falls down the back of my skull like it went behind the fridge. Then I tip my hat to him and leave my card, and stride down the Strand to my club. With luck I’ll be asked to stand in a zinc basin first, and everyone will be wearing spats.

Now to look up the “Brandt-Daroff Exercise”, which I hope involves Indian Clubs, a Medicine Ball or two, and a pint of oatmeal stout afterwards. Physical culture is the key to life, men! To the icewater baths!

A new disease, just for me.

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.

I coulda been an achiever.

My Adderall XR™ anti-ADD medication trial package came with a reassuring booklet, a less reassuring set of pharmacological explanations of how it might mess me up, and a fridge magnet. It’s the “Adderall™ Achievers!” package, you see.

Usually the fridge magnets and other tchotchkes go to the physicians for advertising purposes, so I was puzzled at first. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a picture frame fridge magnet. The idea is that your bad kid, who is totally humping the pooch at school and is going to die in an alley, has just become a model of studious perfection and will now get a picture on the fridge in this special frame that says: I’m an achiever!

I think some Photoshop is in order. I’ll try to think some things up. In the meantime:

achiever

The Plague Ship arrives at Réunion

From the always-cheerful Pro-Med list:

Source: Independent online (IOL), Wed 22 Jun 2005 [edited]
article link

Seychelles: ship quarantined off Reunion – undiagnosed fatal illness
——————————————————————–
A French medical laboratory in Lyons has dismissed any likelihood of
Marburg hemorrhagic fever on board the bulk carrier Clipper Lancaster.
The ship is being held in quarantine off the Indian Ocean island of
Reunion. The nature of the mystery fever that claimed the life of a
Rumanian seafarer and left a 2nd sailor seriously ill remains
unidentified, however.

The 2 seafarers, members of a crew of 22, became ill soon after the 28
429 dead weight tonnage ship left Durban on 5 Jun 2005, where it had
stopped briefly to refuel. The surviving crewman has been responding to
treatment. Before calling at Durban, the ship had loaded lumber at
Pointe Noire in Congo Brazzaville and had called earlier at Angolan
ports. A serious outbreak of Marburg fever is raging in northern
Angola.

Authorities in La Reunion said the vessel would be allowed to continue
its voyage to China once the body had been removed. A postmortem would
not be performed.

[byline: Terry Hutson]