Well, no, not really—it’s a bit of a metaphor: the posts are those made to this little blog, and I’m still not doing well in making posts at regular intervals.

On the other hand, the staggering is real: I’m currently experiencing intermittent episodes of dizziness, particularly when switching between horizontal and vertical positions. Getting up in the morning or falling into bed at night have become problematic activities since the entire world appears to swing into motion and spins for a while before settling down – in other words, I’m experiencing vertigo.

According to various reliable (?) medical sites this is most likely due to benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, BPPV, one of the most common causes of vertigo, especially in decrepit individuals over 50 (which would be me), and most commonly in females (not me, I think, based on the last time I checked, but then what do I know?). Here’s my understanding of the cause:

Normally there’s a labyrinthine structure (semi-circular canal) in the ear which keeps track of the movement of the head by detecting swirling fluids in the labyrinth. Change orientation too fast and tiny hairlike sensors in the labyrinth pick up the swirling motion and report the movement to the brain, which then coordinates the signal with other messages and confirms, “Yep, we’re moving around.” Or not: when the swirling doesn’t track with the other signals the brain reports a problem, and you feel dizzy, sometimes to the point you feel nauseous. To avoid this sensation, we learn as kids not to spin around too much – a little can be mildly entertaining, but a lot can be more than a little unpleasant.

There’s another structure in the ear, the otolith, which is also concerned with head movement. It monitors tiny crystals to figure out how you are positioned with relation to gravity. Unfortunately the crystals can leave the otolith and blunder into the semi-circular canals.Once there, they interfere with the swirling fluids and fool the semi-circular canals into reporting movement – and whoops! – everything seems to be spinning. This can last anywhere from seconds to hours (my episodes last no more than a minute, so far). It’s not usually harmful, just inconvenient, so we label it benign. It also comes on suddenly and can go away just as fast, so we term it paroxysmal – thus it’s a benign but paroxysmal attack of vertigo triggered by changes in position, or Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, BPPV for short. Think of it as dizziness caused by the rocks in your head.

Fortunately there are corrective actions and procedures you can follow which will move the crystals out of your semi-circular canal and relieve the symptoms. The canalith repositioning procedure can be done by a specialist, but patients can also do this at home. Unfortunately you first need to be taught the procedure, and in these days of COVID precautions getting access to a therapist who can teach you is a touch problematic

There are surgical steps if the canalith repositioning doesn’t work. This involves plugging the semi-circular canals so the crystals don’t wander in, and it has a success rate of about 90%. So far the emphasis in my (presumed) BPPV has been on benign, so I’ll wait until a therapist is available. It’s cheaper than getting ‘falling-down drunk!’