Lexicons 2 – Writing about Health

Writing a blog post is inherently narcissistic.  It’s from my point of view, about something that matters to me, from my experience, my feelings, my senses. Writing about my health increases the self-centeredness exponentially. So, I am risking that you are still with me as I describe an a-ha moment that resulted from creating a lexicon for a condition I am experiencing – Vertigo.

Generating a list of words came from a growing frustration to understand and name the dizziness I experience, and from a note Mark left after the first blog post about Lexicons. The Vertigo Lexicon started with opening a Word Doc and typing the word, vertigo. Under it, I  listed everything that came to mind from that narcissistic place. I listed symptoms and words that describe the symptoms – whirling, reeling, tilt, off center. I read about it in Wikipedia and WebMD. I looked up the spiritual meaning of the symptoms and found more ways to think of it – "flighty, scattered thinking" (no shit!) and the affirmation: "I am deeply centered and at peace with life. It is safe for me to be alive and joyous."(amen!) You’ll find the whole list below.

Juxtaposed (or connecting the dots) to this… The first time I encountered anyone suffering from vertigo was six weeks ago. A friend and his puppy visited, on one of his few times out of the house, since he was disabled (officially) by vertigo eighteen months earlier. He was my health coach! How could that happen to him? When three weeks later, I awoke with it, I admit, the prospect of this as a chronic concern caused concern... and still does.

Here’s the a-ha! moment. Having worked with medical students, designed health education programs for hospitals, HMOs, public health, and 4-H (the fourth one is health) and designed hundreds (yes) consumer health libraries and thought countless hours about how people interact around health, I learned (again) Words Matter. Precise words, precisely describing the experience make a difference in how I tell my story and how I feel about it. 

After creating the lexicon, I wrote a note to my friend to tell him I was a friend with empathy. The lexicon completely infiltrated my writing. I found my fear rescinded, as I better understood my vertigo in my own words. If I was still in the business of health education rather than health care operations, I could see spending time on this – making lists as a practice in a waiting room, before seeing a practitioner. Some offices do something like this, except; the ones I’ve used have forced me to choose from their words. My words. My precise words matter. Having figured this out… made me feel better. 

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Vertigo Lexicon

Cary Grant Jimmy Stewart

Hitchcock

Dizzy

Reeling

Whirling

Twirling

Tumbling

Revolving

Off center

Vestibular

Listing

Preoccupied

Tilt

Slant

Lean

Incline

Light headed

Unsteady

Unstable

Nausea

Big drunk

Hangover

Jittery

Waiting for things to right themselves

Aligning the ceiling tiles

Spinning

Kaleidoscope

Sitting too much

Exercising too little

Too many pairs of reading glasses

Wax build up in my ear

Q-tips

The ferocious train horn from10 feet away as I came down the stairs from Madison Street

Too much espresso

Ergonomics

Hunching over my monitor

Couch slouch

Arthritis in my vertebrae

Tight neck muscles

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Hello,

You are not going to believe this, but... I've been dealing with vertigo for the past three weeks. Three Sundays ago, I lay in bed, reading Twitter and heard this noise in my head. Swoosh. I thought my brain moved. I sat up, but could only hope to propel myself in the direction of my pillows; I didn’t know up from down and I couldn’t make the room stop spinning. Moving slowly a couple minutes later, I pushed myself up, swung my legs over the side and held my breath. It took a few seconds, but the room aligned.  The dizzy felt like the worst hangover with no drink, and luckily with no vomit.

I had a chiropractor appt the next day and talked with him, went to my PCP the following day. (Turns out, he works on her and they did a consult, with my ok, on me during her office visit to him.) They determined no stroke, no heart condition, no Meniere’s… probably inner ear. They recommended taking a decongestant, forcing water, cleaning my ears, and became a rotisserie laying on my back, my side, and my stomach. I hung my head right, left, down, over the bed.

I'd never known about vertigo until I talked with you, other than through Cary Grant. I've not missed work. I can drive and don’t seem to have issues when I swing my head to change lanes. I can look forward at my computer and do my work. Then again there are times, like leaning over the side of the kitchen counter to check the status of the cat food bowl, when a wave of dizziness hits. Sometimes, it feels like I list to the right when I walk. I feel off balance, un-centered. It’s disconcerting with the icy sidewalks, I’m preoccupied with falling, yet don’t want to look down because it may reengage the whirling.

Most mornings I sit up slowly from my sleep position, wait for the room to align, stand up, wait once again for the kaleidoscope to stop, and put the picture back together.  I'm fine after that, until I bend over too far to shave my legs, pull on undies, or pick up ice spit from the fridge. Today, I woke up in a sweat that’s lasted longer than any hot flash I've experienced. It poured from my hairline. I finally went outside in my pajamas to cool off. It felt good, but the sweat continued for forty-five minutes. I pushed more water.  The sweat stopped. The spinning stopped, so I am moving around and feeling better.  

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Blah blah blah... I warned you writing about health is narcissistic, I did finish with something about him. My point is, you can see that the lexicon helped me describe the experience to him. Reading the accuracy, maybe not medical accuracy, helped me own it. Writing it down, helps me remember it and tell it accurately, if necessary later. Words Matter.