10/11/01: VERTIGO

I worked almost a full week this week.  I also had lunches with Jessica on Tuesday, Joe on Wednesday and Carin on Thursday.  I went to almost all of my meetings from Monday through Thursday.  Friday was a total bust, however.

Thursday morning, the one month anniversary of the Attacks, I started feeling dizzy.  It grew steadily worse throughout the day.  I still went to meetings and did work-stuff.  I was talking to Mary K., my friend and VP of New Business Strategy, quite a bit throughout the day.  I told her at about 6 PM that there was something wrong with me, I didn’t feel well.  She said, let’s go see a movie.  So we headed downtown to the theater on 11^th Street and University, the one next to The Big Enchilada Mexican Restaurant.  We saw “Made.”  This was not a good choice, it was a horribly stressful movie, and several times during it I wanted to leave because I thought I was going to puke or pass out or something. 

When the movie was over and I stood up to leave, I was so dizzy that I couldn’t walk or stand well.  It wasn’t a lightheaded, giddy dizzy, it was a heavy, the room is spinning and I’m falling kind of dizzy.

Mary K. suggested that we go to the hospital.  By this time, I felt so weird that I said, maybe that’s a good idea.  We took a cab to Beth Israel emergency room.  I bought a Slim Fast and drank it before we went in, just to see if the problem was low blood sugar or lack of protein or something.  Although I had eaten a lot during the day: Thai chicken with Carin, birthday cake at 1515, coffee, cliff bar, etc.  Some unusual stuff, I thought maybe the birthday cake had skewed my blood sugar too much?  I hoped I wasn’t turning diabetic.

But the Slim Fast didn’t help, which was my sign that there was truly something unusually wrong with me.  I had been nauseated and suffered severe headaches constantly since I moved back in to my apartment.  Usually, a Slim Fast would soothe my nausea and make me feel less shaky because it has 10 grams of protein and various vitamins.  Of course, it also has lots of sugar so on this occasion, maybe I was just making the situation worse by adding more sugar to my blood.

So we went into the emergency room.  The intake nurse told us that there were quite a few people from my neighborhood that were coming in with similar symptoms.  Lots of people were coming in with respiratory problems, too.  They took my blood pressure and tested my blood sugar, which were both normal.  I was relieved that my blood pressure wasn’t high, so I wasn’t in immediate danger of kicking the bucket, and thankful, too, that it wasn’t my blood sugar!  But not feeling better that the weirdness in my head was not resolved.

They sent us to the “Urgent Care” unit.  I filled out forms and gave the nurse my insurance card.  Thank God somewhere along the way I have become a grown up, at least enough to have a job that provides health insurance for me.

We waited another 45 minutes in the Urgent Care waiting room.  There was a weird guy that had hurt his hand somehow, and he was trying to get antibiotics and pain killers.  He wasn’t having much luck with getting anything.  I talked to him for a few minutes.  Mary K. commented on how well I talked to the crazy person.  I said, I can talk to anyone.  Crazies included.  I have lots of practice!

Tracey called me on my mobile.  Where are you?, she asked.  I told her, I’m at Beth Israel waiting to see a doctor.  She said, I knew there was something wrong!  She grilled me on all of my symptoms and asked a lot of questions about what kind of service I was getting at Beth Israel.  She is, after all, a Social Worker with the Jewish Board, it is her job to make sure people are receiving adequate care.

The nurse finally called me in.  The nurse wanted me to get undressed, I asked, “how undressed?”  She said, “leave your bra and panties on.”  Well, I didn’t feel like getting that undressed so I left my jeans on.

I lay in the hospital bed, calling Cary and updating Tracey.  I asked Cary to come and relieve Mary K. so she could go home.  I didn’t have her mobile number with me and I didn’t want to crawl down the hall to find her.  Cary was very nice about it, he came to the hospital and had Mary call me on my cell.  I thanked her for staying with me and promised to call her in the morning.

The resident doctor came to see me.  She said right off the bat, “They say there’s nothing wrong with the air down there” and  “You should talk to someone about your anxiety.”

She was nice enough, but I got the message clear and fast that she wasn’t going to even consider that there might be something in the air I was breathing, dioxins or carbon monoxides or some such, that was making me feel dizzy.  Her immediate dismissal was a little suspicious.  After all it was only the hospital people talking about air problems, I hadn't brought it up once the entire time I was there.  If I hadn't been considering that the toxic fires in my neighborhood were having an effect on me, I certainly was considering it now!

She had me do all kinds of exercises, testing me for vertigo.  She said I probably didn’t have real vertigo, that I was probably suffering from “Anxiety-Induced Vertigo.”  That’s what she wrote on my discharge papers.  Anyway it seemed reasonable enough to me.  

They gave me two pills for vertigo and had me wait for an hour to see if the pills worked.  They didn’t.  But the doctor gave me a prescription for them anyway and let me go.