Opto-mize Ebook: Chapter 5 Dizziness

Chapter 5: Dizziness
Vertigo, Meniere's, Visual-Vestibular Mismatch, PPPD, BPPV, Dizziness, Disequilibrium and more.
Learn about vision's role in your dizziness and how vision therapy can be used to help you find your balance with vision. www.opto-mization.com
The only remarkable detail about the day in May when 13-year-old Abby first felt dizzy was that it was hot. In the evening, she started to feel lightheaded, like she was going to fall over. She went to bed dizzy, and when she woke up the next day, the dizziness had not let up. It followed her through end-of- year camp, through graduation and into the summer. Abby was a compet- itive skater and had signed up for intensive training in July, but she had to abandon that when she couldn’t get through more than an hour on the ice without having to lie down.
With the help of a physiotherapist, who thought she’d suffered a viral infection affecting her inner ear, the dizziness eventually started to go away. By September, she was back to school, back to her six-hour-a-day training schedule and back to competing. In mid-November, she won a gold medal in a regional competition. She landed two axels that day and pulled off a spin that consisted of more than a dozen consecutive tight rotations. But four days later, after an intensive school gym class, Abby suddenly felt dizzy again, and for a few moments, she even lost consciousness.
It would be the beginning of a very long, dark chapter for her and her family. Between that day in November and the following May, there would be no time when Abby didn’t feel dizzy. The former figure skater could now only walk by bracing herself against a wall or holding onto another person. She attended only half days at school, when she was able to attend at all.
Over the course of the winter, Abby saw a pediatrician, a neurologist, a cardiologist and a biochemical geneticist, but no one could explain what had happened or offer a solution. The family doctor suggested it was psychiatric - that she was a stressed-out teen who didn’t want to go to school anymore. But Abby insists she did want to go - she just couldn’t get from class to class or keep herself upright. Mental health workers who assessed her agreed with Abby that it must be physical.
Then, one morning in April, Abby woke up and said, “Mom, I can’t see.” She suddenly had double vision so bad she could not read. Her mom called a doctor friend, who advised the family to stop wasting time locally and head straight to Vancouver. The next day, Abby’s 14th birthday, they made the three-hour trek by car and ferry.
The ER doctor at the hospital there was dismissive. She wondered why they thought she’d know more than a neurologist. Then she asked who had applied Abby’s eyeliner. Abby told her that she had done it herself. The doctor replied, “Anyone who does eyeliner with that precision can’t be sick.” They sent her home.
The family was at wit’s end. Her mom was worried it was a brain tumour. Abby continued to suffer from dizziness, nausea and double vision. She was no longer going to school at all. She just stayed at home, in her room, in bed. Her mom took her back to the local emergency room and begged for a referral to an ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist and for an MRI. A few days later, the ENT ruled out a vestibular cause in less than five minutes and called out, “See you at the Olympics!” as the teenager struggled just to walk out the office door. In the elevator, Abby’s mom broke down in tears. “That was our last hope. That was our last chance for a specialist to say, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on.’ That was supposed to be our answer.” At that point, it occurred to her that her daughter may never again walk on her own. “I’m going to have a 40-year-old living in my house, holding onto my shoulder.”
Abby’s optometrist had noticed that, although she’d never had a head injury, her symptoms were uncannily similar to those of a concussion. So he referred Abby to someone who could help with concussions. That appoint- ment was scheduled to take place right after their appointment with the ENT, but now Abby’s mom just wanted to cancel. The treatment could cost
thousands of dollars, she’d been warned. “I’m not paying that kind of money to a concussion doctor,” she was thinking, “if she doesn’t even have a con- cussion.” But Abby convinced her to go, since they were already downtown.
Abby shuffled into the office, with both hands on her mother’s shoulders. They filled out paperwork and then there was some testing. “I was skeptical. If something’s that expensive, my husband and I don’t go individually...