If you suffer from any sort of balance disorder, you’ve probably come to realize that stress plays a big part in how good (or bad) you feel. For me personally, it’s taken me quite a while to realize the intimate connection between these two forces, but once I came to recognize it, it allowed me to better control when and where I feel dizzy.

As I said in my last post, I took a great vacation, and was able to unwind for a few days. I felt tremendously better (I did have my usual daily dizziness, but it was actually much better than usual). The lack of work-related stress really seemed to have a positive impact on how I felt.

I find exercise has the same stress-relieving effect — and it usually lasts for several hours after I exercise. And alcohol, while it certainly relieves stress in the short term, actually makes me feel more stressed in the longer term.

So while alcohol may be a quick fix for stress, it has a negative cumulative effect, and can often leave you feeling more stressed later in the day or the next day. Not to mention that alcohol is usually a motivation-killer as well.

As I’ve told myself many times, I need to avoid alcohol more, eat better and exercise more regularly (good advice for anyone, balance disorder or not). But for me (and anyone else with balance issues), the effects of not doing these things are not just felt in 10 or 20 years, but instead almost immediately.

After the first round of vestibular rehabilitation exercises that I got a little while ago, it was time for me to go back to the VRT clinic so they could check up on how the exercises were going. I saw a different therapist this time, who was just as friendly and helpful as my regular therapist.

I told her about some positional discomfort I have when lying down on my stomach, and she asked if we could try a few more tests with the goggles with the infrared camera. I never mind more tests, since I’m always hopeful it will provide more answers.

So we went through the head-shake tests again (where the therapist shakes your head and then asks you to look to the right and then to the left), and then I watched the videotaped results again.

Much to my surprise, the nystagmus (abnormal eye movements indicating a loss of vestibular function) was present on both sides — meaning that while my right ear is worse, my left ear’s vestibular system is likely also damaged.

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So I just came back from the vestibular rehabilitation therapist, and we went over my first exercises today. Some of them made me feel pretty dizzy and nauseous, but she says that that’s a good thing.

So I basically have 3 exercises that I have to do 3 times per day. She said we’d move on to some more challenging exercises once these become easier.

The first exercise is to stand heel-to-toe in a doorway with my eyes closed (it’s harder than it sounds, but maybe just for me). I guess this is to retrain my brain to rely more on my feet for balance than just using my vestibular system.

The second is to look at a business card from arm’s length away while shaking my head faster and faster. This one made me particularly dizzy — but again, that’s supposedly a good sign for the potential for improvement.

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I went to a physiotherapy clinic for an assessment with a physiotherapist that specializes in vestibular rehabilitation therapy, and I got some extremely good news. She thinks she can have my functioning almost back to normal in about 6 weeks!

The physiotherapist videotaped my eyes using some goggles (they resemble scuba goggles, and this is the third time I’ve had to wear them for this particular type of test). They’re very tight-fitting and a bit uncomfortable, and they make things very dark.

Apparently there are infrared cameras inside the goggles that record your eye movements; so after the physiotherapist shook my head back and forth with her hands, I had to look up and to the left, and then up and to the right.

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Well, it’s a long weekend here in Canada (a very long weekend for me, since July 1st is Canada Day, and I also took an extra day off on Monday). This usually means lots of travelling in the car, and for us dizziness sufferers, some uncomfortable times.

I thought I’d provide a quick list of things that seem to work well for me when I have to travel as far as keeping the dizziness at a minimum:

1. If at all possible, be the one driving. Strange as it may sound, I get much more dizzy when someone else is driving. I think it’s that I can’t anticipate the shifts in balance as quickly as when I have to pay attention to them.

2. Avoid caffeine and be wary of medications. Caffeine makes you jumpy and agitated, and is just going to make your dizziness worse. If you’re too tired and feel like you need caffeine to keep going, take a break instead (and a quick nap somewhere safe off the road if you can). Avoiding medications that make you drowsy is also an obvious one — being safe should be your first concern.

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I mentioned before that the meclizine was really helping things. It would seem however, that for some reason, it’s no longer really helping very much at all.

I’ve frequently been waking up with very dizzy, falling sensations. It’s especially bad in the morning when I wake up — and it’s starting to drive me a little nuts.

It’s tough to deal with, especially when I thought I had somewhat of a solution with the meclizine. I’m still taking it, and it seems to keep things from getting overwhelmingly dizzy, but it’s not doing nearly what it was before.

The comment about these being referred to as “drop attacks” is right on the money. That’s exactly like what they feel like — one minute I’m sitting or standing comfortably doing something, the next I feel like I’m tumbling through space.

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When I described my visit to the neurotologist recently, I mentioned that he prescribed me 12.5 milligrams of meclizine three times per day. This initially seemed like quite a bit to me — but after doing some research, I guess it’s pretty much the lowest dosage possible.

Meclizine, which is often sold under the brand names Bonine and Antivert, is both an antihistamine and an antiemetic (it prevents vertigo). Mine came in 25 mg tablets that I can break in half and tastes like some gross artificial berry that doesn’t actually exist in nature (yes, I had to chew it just to see what it tasted like).

While I was hesitant about taking it at first, I took some yesterday, last night and today, and I find it actually helps substantially. I almost feel 100% while taking it (there’s still a slight twinge of something there once in a while, but it comes and goes).

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This may not seem like a momentous occasion to anyone else, but I’ve only had about 3 cups of regular-strength coffee in 3 years. Yes, that’s right, about 1 cup of coffee a year.

But today my friend made some coffee (which was really tasty by the way), and I thought I would try to just suck it up and drink some. And guess what? My brain didn’t explode.

I was always very worried about the caffeine inciting worse dizziness, but I think I really need to force myself to get back to normal in many ways. Drinking a coffee once in a while might actually not be such a bad thing. Next time you have a cup of coffee, appreciate it — it’s not so easy for everyone to drink!

I don’t ever remember being able to sleep well. Even when I was a little kid, I had trouble sleeping, and would often wake up in the night, unable to fall back to sleep. But lately, my sleeplessness has reached a whole new level.

I’m not sure what’s causing the sleeplessness, but it usually goes something like this. I lie in bed, almost asleep — until I get a strong sensation of movement that startles me completely out of my state of almost-sleep.

It’s strong enough that I actually lie in bed, muscles tensed, wondering if I did actually move — even though I know that I really didn’t. This is coupled with a second feeling, where I am actually sleeping, and then wake up because I’ve rolled over — and then get the sensation that I just keep going.

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Well, I had my caloric testing done this week, and the results were a little odd. I first did a hearing test, after which the tester informed me that the results were completely normal — I was happy about that, because I don’t particularly feel like losing my hearing.

I then did a test where I had to watch a red light move back and forth, both vertically and horizontally. I didn’t find it particularly dizziness-inducing, I was more dizzy just having to lie on an incline.

We then did the caloric testing, starting with warm water in the left ear. I had thought before that the caloric testing would be one quick squirt of water, not a continuous jet of water into your ear. The warm water in the left ear made me quite dizzy, which the tester informed me was actually normal.

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