Note: Part II of my February 5 blog on Incivility in America will have to wait. I want to do a little more research and rethink my arguments before putting them down in writing for others to see. I anticipate having the follow-up ready for posting on March 5.  For today’s blog, I’ve recounted my recent battle with dizziness and the diagnosis of Meniere’s disease that followed.

Why is everything spinning? That question gripped my mind as I opened my eyes at 1 am on a November morning, bringing an abrupt end to a peaceful sleep. I remained still but everything around me — the dresser, the nightstand, the reading chair, even the bed — lurched wildly to the right.

“What’s wrong?” my wife asked.

“I think I’m having a dizzy spell.” An easy diagnosis. But why? I closed my eyes for a few minutes, but when I opened them, the dizziness remained. Even worse, a new sensation started to assert itself over my body  — nausea. It grew to the point where vomiting seemed inevitable. I struggled out of bed and immediately clutched the nearest bedpost to keep myself from pitching forward. I looked toward the bathroom. It seemed 100 miles away. Moving from one bedpost to another, I had just enough balance to reach the bathroom door, which I embraced like a long-lost lover. With nausea running roughshod through my gut, I fell to the floor and crawled to the toilet, reaching it only a second or two before most of last night’s dinner came rushing out.

Vomiting may not be the most painful thing in the world, but there are few things that make one feel more helpless. It’s as if some crazy demon in your belly is taking digested food and forcing it back up your throat. Still, when it’s over there is at least some relief. I had that relief from the nausea, but not the dizziness. If anything, it was worse. Now I didn’t dare stand up. Instead I slunk along the floor like a sick lizard until I reached the foot of the bed.

“Throw me a blanket and pillow,” I called to my wife.

“Can’t you get back into bed?” she asked worriedly.

“I’m too dizzy to try.”

A blanket and pillow landed beside me, and soon I fell back to sleep with the carpet as my mattress and the floor as my bed. At some point, the dizziness subsided enough for me to return to the read bed, and when I woke up the next morning, the dizziness was gone.

What had happened? My wife wondered the same thing, and she offered the solution that every man hates to hear.

“You need to see a doctor.”

“But maybe it was just –”

“No! You had me really scared. Call a doctor today.”

So I did, specifically an ENT (ears, nose, and throat) physician. The appointment was set for December 20, but before that date arrived, I had another attack of dizziness. This one was less severe than the first, but serious enough to make me realize that this problem wasn’t going away on its own. The 20th arrived, and after an audiology test and some other preliminaries, I sat in the office of Dr. Richard Irene. I told him about the dizzy spells and a ringing sensation that sometimes flared in my left ear. Dr. Irene gave me a quick exam and then offered his observations.

“I believe you have Meniere’s Disease,” he said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a disease of the inner ear. You have all the symptoms — tinnitus, occasional dizzy spells, and some hearing loss. There’s no cure, but it can be treated with prescription drugs and — if necessary — a steroid injection.”

“I think I’ll try the drugs first.”

“Sure, and one more thing. You need to go on a low-sodium diet.”

“How low?”

“Try to stay under one gram a day.”

I grimaced. Sodium was a ubiquitous substance in so may foods. It would be an enormous challenge, but I knew I had to try. I didn’t want a repeat of what I’d gone through a few nights before. A little later, I said good-bye to Dr. Irene — and to pepperoni pizza, fast-food hamburgers, chicken fingers, tartar sauce, French onion soup, and so many other delicious, sodium-packed foods.