So this past Labor Day weekend (9/5 in the US) I began quite the adventure. The Friday prior my wife and I were driving out to get coffee when I experienced a… grey-out let’s call it. I didn’t feel like I was going to pass out but I didn’t feel in control of myself and felt slightly dizzy. I told her she better drive. I started to feel progressively dizzier. I told her she better drive me to urgent care. After a delightful visit to UC where the doctor checked everything but my ears (heart, lungs, etc, he really wanted it to be a heart problem) I was sent home with an order to follow up with my doctor.

I was feeling dizzy for the rest of the day and it started to get worse on Saturday. By Sunday morning I was throwing up and could barely walk. My poor wife had to pour me into her mother’s wheelchair and wheel me out to the car. She drove me to the Emergency Room early Sunday morning where I spent the day getting pump full of anti-nausea and anti-vertigo drugs, as well as mega-doses of Tylenol since I also had a high fever. I had an IV in each arm. Fun stuff. After about 8 hours my ER doctor, Dr. Poon, (yes, that’s his real name) came in and declared that they had “fixed” me. I wasn’t throwing up any more, I didn’t feel dizzy, and my fever broke so they kicked me loose. That was great, I really didn’t want to spend the night in that torture device they call an ER bed.

For the next few days my fever came back but Excedrin finally knocked it out. And I was dizzy again. I finally saw my doctor a few days later and he gave me a prescription for the vertigo which finally knocked the dizziness out permanently. However, I was losing weight. It was rapid enough that it concerned me. 15 lbs in two weeks is a bit much. My doctor’s answer; “You need to lose weight.” Thanks doc. For the next two weeks I had no energy and could barely get out of bed. I finally started feeling like I could drive and maybe go to work the following Monday. This was on a Friday.

That night my wife was laying on the floor doing some stretches when she called to saying that she felt dizzy. Uh oh. I helped her up into bed. She had vertigo.

Hmmmm….

I was still recovering but the next day I tried to help her with everything. She threw up once in the morning but that was it. She spent one day feeling really dizzy but by Sunday she was ready to go grocery shopping. How’d she do that??? By Monday she was fine and I went to work.

I asked my doctor if this could have been a virus or something. His answer, “Nope. Just a coincidence”

Hmmmm….

I get back to work the following Monday after being off for two weeks. I’m talking to one of the guys here in the office who said the exact same thing happened to him. He and his wife were driving somewhere and he started feeling dizzy and had to pull over and let his wife drive. He was diagnosed with vertigo. It took him two weeks to fully recover.

Hmmmm….

Once coincidence is just that. Two coincidences are not coincidences; they are a pattern. Be careful out there. Wash your hands constantly. I’m starting to think there is another virus going around out there that targets your inner ear. It’s an awful way to lose weight. Trust me.