It’s been 3 days since we left the ship and I’m still suffering from motion sickness. The constant bobbing seems to have abated, but I continue having the oddest sensation of falling backward – even when seated – like my head and shoulders have a gravitational attraction to the floor behind me. I also have the persistent sense that things are tilted or slanted. When I walk, the world angles sideways. When standing I feel really off-balance, like I may fall.

It’s definitely getting to me. I try to stay calm and ignore it as much as I can, but frankly it’s not easy. How the hell do you ignore the fact that the whole effing world is skewed?! My personality doesn’t help matters. My normal speed is 50 miles a minute, I bore incredibly easily and can’t sit still to save my life. My husband urges me to rest – but I just don’t do bon-bons and daytime TV! Asking me to lie around all day is equivalent to “let me drill a hole in your head and let your brains ooze out.” I am the suckiest patient ever.

I had some wine the past few nights (to relax as much as anything), and it helped quite a bit. But this morning the carousel was up-and-running and I was really nauseous (and not wanting to spend the day drunk) I ate a bowl of cereal. Immediately the spinning seemed to intensify. WTF?!

Normally when I have this level of dizziness my ear is totally jacked up – meaning my Meniere’s symptoms are terrible: deafness, pressure, tinnitus, the whole shabang. And the episodes almost always have a cause (though whether I can control them is a whole other story). In the case of sodium (aka food) it’s totally up to me, meaning I watch what I eat very carefully. But my ear is also incredibly sensitive to the weather (barometric pressure) and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about that. So, often when we get a quick change of weather (usually fair to rain) I have a spontaneous change in symptoms (fine to bad and then back again). But this is the first time I’ve had the intense dizziness or vertigo without any of the accompanying ear symptoms.

I have been really busy catching up on chores since we got back, and doing a lot of bending over/up/down, so I decided to take a breather and just sit in front of the computer for a little while. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be helping much.

I hate having no control over my own body. . It’s one thing to make the conscious choice of getting wasted or riding the tilt-a-whirl and then paying the price, but this blows. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I have Meniere’s. I can’t change it and it’s not going to go away. But at least I know I won’t always feel as lousy as today. and I love life. So my frame is tilted.. I have to cope the best I can.