The darkness

I was not planning to blog today only a certain experience I just had has urged me to do so. During the entire 7.5 years of living with vertigo standing or walking in darkeness (dark room,dim room ) have been exceptionally demanding and taxing on my vestibular system. I mean the visual movement/swaying and the sense of being pushed and pulled really intensifies as soon as I am standing or walking in the dark. My sense of space becomes confused and steadiness becomes a major problem. It has been this way for all this time. Every night I turn the light off before bed and then take a short few steps to the bed immediately becoming extremely unbalanced and disorientated. It's the same heightened vertigo sensation that happens even in a slightly lit room or outside on a dark evening walk. Darkness dramatically increases my symptoms.

I remember many years ago during my vestibular rehabilitation period I would tax my self further by turning all the lights of in a room (nearly pitch black) and focus only on the bright red light glowing from my tv set standby light. I would do this in darkness most nights in hope that my brain and senses would somehow recalibrate. With intent I would stare at this small light trying to maintain my twitching jerking gaze upon it all the while feeling like the room was lifting me up and down and the room appearing to sway left and right. I would also try to stand on one leg in the dark and gaze at the light holding this one legged position as long as possible thinking this extra balance demand would in time at least improve this darkness issue. If you have had or do have vertigo you will appreciate just how hard it is to stand on one leg for a period of time (seconds) in daylight never mind doing it in the dark.

I say all this because I just turned my lights off and for some reason realised how much steadier the world is.I have just stood in the same position all those years ago and there is movement but nothing like before. Hell I just stood on one leg and held position for 20 sec quite the feat since I used to fall within 1-5 sec/I guess I have come along way. It is easy to forget this when I still have those bad days and weeks but the majority of my time these past 2 months especially have been steadier.

Since starting this blog I have posted  a couple of times about a random week or two here and there feeling better only to take a complete nosedive back into vertigo ridden hell. I have never had more than a 2 week period where symptoms stayed less intense. These random better weeks only started happening 6 years into my journey.

However since Dec 1st I have had my longest period of less intense symptoms that I have ever had ( just over 2 months). I did have a really bad week a few weeks ago but snapped out of it only to continue this more manageable intensity of daily symptoms. How do I know it's better lately well I find myself not thinking about dizziness every time I walk from one room to the next and I don't find myself suffering in a overwhelming state of constant head fullness and vision fuzziness at all times and the blasted moving floor is not playing as many tricks on me. I don't know how long this will continue and I still have all the same symptoms daily but I hope my symptoms continue on this less intense steadier path. I sure appreciate the lift in weight.

I hope this gives you long term sufferers out there some much needed hope. You and me will get there eventually.

Swimmyhead