On BPPV

The blog, the proposed Podcasting, just about everything. All have been put firmly on hold while I try to deal with the fact that I can't reliably stay upright.

That's not strictly right. I can stay upright. I just would prefer to lie down.

It all started about seven weeks ago in the retail Mecca that is Victoria Square. I was heading back to the car and had sat down to footer with the iPhone. As I finished and looked up, the whole world started to spin. I don't mean that I felt a bit lightheaded. I mean that everything started to go round and round. Vertical spinning and lots of it. It probably lasted for about sixty seconds but the after effects lingered. I was left sitting there for a good forty minutes before I was fit to struggle up to Starbucks where my good lady was summoned to take me home.

The car was left in the carpark for the next couple of days and I was pretty much confined to bed. Three trips to GPs of variable quality and one consultant of considerable quality and a diagnosis of BPPV was confirmed about three times over. For those unfamiliar, Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo is basically a problem with the inner ear which may well have been caused by a comedy whacking of the head off an office doorframe at substantial velocity. Until it is resolved - in a seemingly unspecified timeframe - I am left feeling constantly slightly off balance and even more grumpy than usual. The result is half days at work, headaches, crushing tiredness and no clue as what to do to speed the process of recovery up. The only really useful thing I have been told is that movement seems to help. Thus I am pounding the streets at every opportunity.

The resultant tiredness promptly bites me on the behind and throws me off balance again. Most worryingly, the annual pilgrimage to the Tattoo in Edinburgh and the World Pipe Band Championships in Glasgow is almost upon us. I was able to manage a pathetic ninety minutes at the European Championships at Stormont last weekend, which bodes less than well for the normal eight hours at the Worlds.

In summary. WANTED: New inner ear. Will pay up to ten pounds.