Vertigo or Squirrel Droppings or A Tale of Two Nurses

By Fred Prout

My body is revolting. WAIT, WHAT?  Alexa, erase that and start over.

A follow up to the vividly remembered two weeks without beer. I hope I didn’t give the impression I drink too much. Two possibly three a week. So that two weeks is not a big deal. It’s just that the words “ you can’t “ automatically creates a desire.

As I may have mentioned, once or thrice, my body is at war with me.

The latest battle was a three day siege of vertigo. Now, if that’s an unfamiliar medical term, let me elucidate. Vertigo is the ability to stand still in a spinning room.If you enjoy being dizzy, falling down and walking into walls for three days, vertigo could be a great alternative to, say, a rousing, fast paced game of bingo. Or chess.

After an enjoyable five hours in the local ER, Doctor Torquemada gave me some anti dizzy pills. Yes, the famous no alcohol pills. He also said that there was an exercise I could do at home. Could be very helpful. He then left the room without giving me further information about said exercise. Nurse Kylie handed me my hat and started to escort me out the door. “Do you need a wheelchair?“

“No thanks, it’s a two minute walk home and I can manage. But I need the restroom before I go.” Fortunately, it was right across from my cubicle, so, I walked straight towards it and walked right into the wall. Thankfully nurse Kylie was waiting right outside the door. Thankfully, also, my belly kept my nose intact.

As luck would have it, the van from the home for senior delinquents was picking someone else up. I hitched a ride and traded a dizzy two minute walk for a dizzy seven minute drive. The pills were starting to kick in so I managed to get into my apartment without hitting any further walls.

We are fortunate to have a wonderful, caring Nurse Dana, who later rang my bell to see how I was. She also had the forethought to research and print out the home exercises the doc forgot about. “Lie down on your ….. side and turn your head 45 degrees to the……Then turn your head……” I read this eight or nine times before I checked the math. I realized that it involved turning my head 360 degrees. I tried, and failed, to contact Linda Blair from The Exorcist so I had to try several variations to finally get some relief.

As it happens, my daughter came to visit shortly after this happened. She figured out that this occurred because the squirrel inside my head fell off his wheel. Makes sense to me.