The little musical note at the top isn't accidental either, seeing as Leslie happens to be a quite excellent Canadian singer-songwriter. I'll give her a very deserving shout-out: Leslie Alexander. Go see and listen. She's the real-deal.
Right then. In the spirit of sharing, I'm going to continue on to my original topic. Musician's and performers have a myriad of 'career-specific' ailments that can affect us. Usually, repetitive motion related conditions tend to dominate conversations, i.e. tendonitis, bursitis, carpal tunnel, repetitive motion strain, etc.
Instead of trying to add to an already well-represented topic, I'm going to talk about something else. Dizziness.
I 'confessed' sometime ago and told the internet all about having had surgery on my calf muscles in order to 'finally' correct a partially-corrected birth defect.
Well, I went back to read that post, called Much Ado About Nothing from 2007. I never did say anymore about it, not to mention, never did I talk about the second surgery.
I had that second surgery in January 2008. To be completely honest: I haven't been the same since. From the moment I was brought out of general anesthetic, I haven't felt 'right'.
It feels too long to go into the whole story, so I'll just cover a few of the essentials: Less than 2 weeks post surgery; in addition to having trouble with pain management, I was struck with a case of BPPV (Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo). This was no case of your-average-garden-variety-bed-spins-due-to-too-much-alcohol...
I still don't feel right. It's December 2009, and now going onto 2 years since that initial onset.
I've been to see an ENT 'dizzy' specialist, a neurologist. I've had an MRI, CT scans, and had balance and vertigo tests that I don't care to repeat.
All that changed was that I stopped suffering from actual Vertigo (the spins). Now, I kind of exist in a semi-permanent state of imbalance and what is called 'vestibular deficiency'.
The short-version explanation is that the rocks in my head, well my inner ear actually, don't stay put in their little 'cocoons'. They break-off and float around and bump up against little tiny, microscopic hairs that are part of our balance system. Every time they bump, I will see things as though they are moving slowly about in my visual field, or I will feel light 'bumps' and 'pushes', or I will have a sensation very much like being in one of those funhouses with the room where the floor keeps shifting, trying to knock you off balance.
And, I can frequently feel sound. This can be unsettling (for obvious reasons) because I never seem to get any warning when it is about to happen. Unfortunately, it seems worst when it's women's voices in the Alto range. My wife tries not to take this personally...
Oddly enough, one would think that my playing the drums would be a bad thing, but the instrument I play seems to affect me the least. I didn't say that it all made sense...
While I could probably write pages about this experience, I really just want to finally put it out there that something happened that has changed me in no small way.
Yes, I can function fairly normally: The Doctors did assure me that my brain will gradually adapt to the mixed signals it receives. The brain is pretty remarkable that way. It will learn which signals to ignore and simply ignore them.
When I get tired, or am having a bad balance day, nothing helps. I can't be in situations that have a lot of stimulation or lots of background noise. I'm always on guard when I'm walking, because I will suddenly bump into things, and I can't help doing so. It's no fun feeling like a clumsy idiot at times, but there you have it.
Fortunately, I've managed to avoid any problems while playing the drums. Though I've come close to falling off my seat on many occasions, I've avoided actually falling.
I'll go for days at a time feeling nauseous and wanting to throw up, but it never quite gets that far.
Dr. Dizzy suggested that I will have this for the rest of my life. Or, it could just as easily disappear one day. In the meantime, all I can do is try to cope as best I can.
Nice.
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