Vertigo (real life, not the film)

http://hitchcockfilmsurvey.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/vertigo-%E2%80%94-teetering-between-chauvinism-and-psychoanalysis/

Over the past month I've been experiencing bouts of vertigo. I've suffered it to a greater or lesser degree between 2003 and the present time. Twice in that time I've been hospitalized because I just couldn't stand up or walk unaided. Sometimes the vertigo is accompanied by nausea, at other times there's none. Once I have vertigo the symptoms can continue for months. It's a debilitating condition and most people just don't understand what it is like to have a problem with an internal guidance system that we all take for granted. Recent diagnosis suggests that perhaps some of the vertigo I experience is associated with migraine, though nothing is conclusive. Strangely enough my vertigo and migraines (migraine aura without pain) are often accompanied by problems with my spine, which makes sense because when I am worried about walking I tense my body in anticipation that I might fall. All of this creates anxiety, and why wouldn't it! Anxiety is a normal response to not being able to operate in the world as you usually would. I was sitting outside a coffee shop yesterday, trying to remain calm, trying to enjoy the beautiful Melbourne sunshine, when a woman visiting Melbourne from Queensland, stopped to ask if I knew where she could print out some photographs. I directed her to the local Ted's. Whilst she was talking I asked if she could move in front of me, rather than the side because turning my head to look at her was causing me to feel dizzy. I told her about my vertigo and she told me about the fact that the classical musician Andre Rieu had to cancel his 2010 performances in Australia due to vertigo, and in his case, the vertigo had been caused by a virus.  I felt strangely consoled that I was not alone, that I was not the only person experiencing the isolation and distress brought on by this disease, exacerbated I think, but the fact that I live alone. She said that she had experienced vertigo on and off during her life and described an exercise, which I identified as the Epley maneuver to treat Benign Positional Vertigo. My inner ear problems cause me grief, but as I said to her, most of us have some health issue to deal with. The vertigo doesn't stop me from doing things, but does cause me great anxiety. I'm looking forward to this episode passing so that I can get on with my life & what that really means for me, is to be able to just walk out into the day and interact with the world without too much worry. For those interested, vertigo is not  the way it is depicted in Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 drama Vertigo, it's not always about how an individual reacts to heights, or about the room spinning, although it can be like that,  it can cause a feeling that you are going to fall, it can cause you to adopt an unbalanced gait, it can leave you unable to lift your head because you can't find your point of gravity, it can be just a strange feeling of dizziness, it's as individual as we are. However what was interesting about Hitchcock's presentation of vertigo is it associations with personal psychology, for vertigo does indeed create psychological disturbances. The disturbing thing about the film Vertigo is we begin to associate vertigo with Madeleine's schizophrenia and as such, we might see those who experience vertigo as having some kind of mental illness, when in fact the underlying physical problem actually feeds the psychosis, not the other way around!