I managed to get by Dorian’s passage unscathed (meaning that Dorian slowly went north up the Atlantic coast of Florida and missed us completely) with little more than some mild wind damage and a bit of minor flooding from the storms Dorian drug along with its passing. And then I had to wait for the facilities where I work to slowly open back up, as they’d shut everything down, including power off, planning for the worst. By the time I got back in on a Wednesday I was swamped with work, and stayed busy until that Friday.

It was on that Friday that I started to feel not so good and a little queasy. Nothing bad, but still not too fun and wonderful, if you know what I mean. That continued on through the weekend and into Sunday, when I drove up to Jacksonville to see my daughter.

That turned out to be a worse day than expected. I was beginning to suffer from bouts of vertigo, such that I had my wife driving up, then down, part of the way. When we arrived at my daughter’s I sat down on one of their sofas, sat back, and immediately fell to sleep. I slept the entire time I was there.

When we finally got back to Orlando I went to bed early, thinking it was an ear infection.

When I woke up the next day I had full blown nearly continuous vertigo: dizziness, nausea, spinning room, the who megillah. My doctor wanted me to head over to an ER, but I was so nauseated I went back to lie down and stayed there for the next two hours. We then went to see my doctor, who worked me in, and she couldn’t find anything. She suspected it might be benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), for where there are a number of causes. She ran a quick test and couldn’t diagnose it from that, so she sent me on to the ER. It was at the ER that they decided to keep me overnight for tests and observations.

From mid-Monday to mid-Tuesday I was a “guest” of the hospital. While there they gave me an MRI/MRA and CT scan, as well as a battery of blood test. I got so much saline solution pumped in me I was pissing saline through Thursday of that week; somebody (I don’t remember who) said I was dehydrated. From all that testing they ruled out a stroke, a tumor, or some other major physical issue for which major vertigo is a symptom. So I felt good about that.

Once discharged I stayed home for the rest of the week with no road travel at all. I kept having bouts of vertigo, which triggered me to go back to the bedroom, lie down and perform a specific exercise that performed Canalith repositioning. It was interesting in that it worked until another bout. But I could control it. I kept that up for some number of days.

Today I’m actually feeling pretty great. It’s been several days since I had any vertigo, but more significantly I feel really good. In looking back over what I was feeling I’m beginning to wonder if I also didn’t have some sort of an infection (sinuses and/or ear), because I can get tired and have a minor headache with a running nose if I do.

So that’s it. Between all of that happening I’ve been busy, only now “coming up for air” as it were. Once again God and nature have tutored me on the limitations and weaknesses of the physical human form.