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How come no one warns you about vestibular neuritis vertigo! 
my.clevelandclinic.org
Kind of the short version is that the vestibular system helps translate all the info you get from your eyes and ears into information your brain can use and puts "position stamps" (balance) on it and links it together for continuity, predictability and even time passage. Kind of like
There is a car over there and you are standing like this, now the car is closer and you are turned slightly to the left, I The Vestibular, predict that in an equal amount of time the car will be X amount closer and you will be turned even more to the left
But it does it with everything and all the time so you don't notice it, and everything just . . . flows. When it hit I still got ALL of the information, just without all the helpful metadata, like "You have seen that car, it was over there just a bit ago and you were sitting upright turned slightly to left of midline" now it's just a car that you have no idea where it came from or where it is going AND IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH, because you are lacking positional context your eyes became independent agents and you see the same car twice with zero ability to tell what it's actual position relative to you is and just all of the info from your eyes and ears gets dumped on your brain which has zero experience dealing with raw data
Oh, and you lose your sense of time passage because a lot of that is linked to balance / position visual clues like knowing how fast a car moves or even the sound of wind compared to leaves moving on a tree.
AND EVEN MORE IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH!!!!!
This isn't your brain, as in the voice in your head that you think of as "you" this is just the firewall filter that allows you to understand and process the all that information between you and the outside world failing, so behind all of this (at least until you start vomiting uncontrollably ) The You Inside Your Head is fully aware and functioning but has no idea what is going on and it pretty literally felt like the world was melting away.
And did I mention I was driving at the time! I was headed to a job site in Forest Grove when it hit and at one point it wasn't "Jesus take the wheel" it was "Oh, !@#$, I really hope the Subaru collision avoidance system works like they say it does!" I managed to make it to the urgent(sic) care in FG, 0/10 would not recommend, and despite presenting as suffering a stroke after 2 hours all they did was take my insurance info before anything else, give me a shot of anti nausea goop and wash the wax out of my ears
Our daughter drove me to St Vincent's and despite losing consciousness a few times I still managed to tell her she was driving too fast
Got to St V's and they started to yell at her for her parking, than they saw me falling out of the passenger seat, vomiting and sweating so much my wife debated just trashing the clothes I had on, they got me in a chair, in and out of admitting in under 2 min and in back where they called Code Stroke. I spent a couple days in the hospital with neurologists checking on me a couple times a day and got 2 CT Scans and an MRI, clean bill of health no stroke signs at all
I would give St Vincent's an 8/10 and really it was the pizza that tasted like it had been wrapped in foil and cooked in a dishwasher that brought their score down the most, but the french toast and bacon were pretty good
Recovery for me will be rest, some anti nausea meds and eye tracking exercises to help my brain relearn how to keep my eyes working together and get my body balance recalibrated
So what causes it? A virus that just hangs out on your vestibular nerves that gets tapped just the wrong way by another virus or bacteria or . . . something?
What can you do to prevent it? Nothing
Can you test for it or predict it? Nope
Could it happen again? Yes, but the good news with that is that the odds don't change after getting it, they just reset
And on the chance that you missed this part . . .
Vestibular Neuritis: Symptoms, Causes & Treatment
Vestibular neuritis is an inner ear disorder that causes symptoms like sudden vertigo, dizziness, nausea and vomiting.
my.clevelandclinic.org
Kind of the short version is that the vestibular system helps translate all the info you get from your eyes and ears into information your brain can use and puts "position stamps" (balance) on it and links it together for continuity, predictability and even time passage. Kind of like
There is a car over there and you are standing like this, now the car is closer and you are turned slightly to the left, I The Vestibular, predict that in an equal amount of time the car will be X amount closer and you will be turned even more to the left
But it does it with everything and all the time so you don't notice it, and everything just . . . flows. When it hit I still got ALL of the information, just without all the helpful metadata, like "You have seen that car, it was over there just a bit ago and you were sitting upright turned slightly to left of midline" now it's just a car that you have no idea where it came from or where it is going AND IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH, because you are lacking positional context your eyes became independent agents and you see the same car twice with zero ability to tell what it's actual position relative to you is and just all of the info from your eyes and ears gets dumped on your brain which has zero experience dealing with raw data
Oh, and you lose your sense of time passage because a lot of that is linked to balance / position visual clues like knowing how fast a car moves or even the sound of wind compared to leaves moving on a tree.
AND EVEN MORE IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH!!!!!
This isn't your brain, as in the voice in your head that you think of as "you" this is just the firewall filter that allows you to understand and process the all that information between you and the outside world failing, so behind all of this (at least until you start vomiting uncontrollably
) The You Inside Your Head is fully aware and functioning but has no idea what is going on and it pretty literally felt like the world was melting away.And did I mention I was driving at the time! I was headed to a job site in Forest Grove when it hit and at one point it wasn't "Jesus take the wheel" it was "Oh, !@#$, I really hope the Subaru collision avoidance system works like they say it does!" I managed to make it to the urgent(sic) care in FG, 0/10 would not recommend, and despite presenting as suffering a stroke after 2 hours all they did was take my insurance info before anything else, give me a shot of anti nausea goop and wash the wax out of my ears
Our daughter drove me to St Vincent's and despite losing consciousness a few times I still managed to tell her she was driving too fast
Got to St V's and they started to yell at her for her parking, than they saw me falling out of the passenger seat, vomiting and sweating so much my wife debated just trashing the clothes I had on, they got me in a chair, in and out of admitting in under 2 min and in back where they called Code Stroke. I spent a couple days in the hospital with neurologists checking on me a couple times a day and got 2 CT Scans and an MRI, clean bill of health no stroke signs at all
I would give St Vincent's an 8/10 and really it was the pizza that tasted like it had been wrapped in foil and cooked in a dishwasher that brought their score down the most, but the french toast and bacon were pretty good
Recovery for me will be rest, some anti nausea meds and eye tracking exercises to help my brain relearn how to keep my eyes working together and get my body balance recalibrated
So what causes it? A virus that just hangs out on your vestibular nerves that gets tapped just the wrong way by another virus or bacteria or . . . something?
What can you do to prevent it? Nothing
Can you test for it or predict it? Nope
Could it happen again? Yes, but the good news with that is that the odds don't change after getting it, they just reset
And on the chance that you missed this part . . .
