Full article reading time excluding linked videos about 15-20 minutes.
IMAGINE: you wake up in the morning and as you get out of bed all of a sudden the room starts spinning violently; it’s nothing but a whirling blur. You can’t tell up from down, left from right. You have the sensation that you are being pushed over and pulled toward the floor. You lose your balance fall. From your position on the floor, or bed if you were lucky enough to fall in that direction and not split your skull open on some piece of furniture on the way to the floor, you see the room whirling around you, jerking back and forth violently as it does, and you’re nauseated. Your world is completely out of control, a swirling blur to your eyes and you just want it to stop. This is perhaps the worst and most frightening feeling you’ve ever had. “Make it stop, please God make it stop!” you think to yourself. Luckily, in a minute it does…but only until you begin to move again. “What’s wrong with me? Is it an infection, a stroke, a brain tumor?” These are things that may cross your mind.
What you have just experienced is called vertigo. Something like 40% of people will experience vertigo at least once during their lifetime. One study published on the National Institutes of Health web site suggests that about 73% of BPPV cases affect those between the ages of 31-60 which of course makes up a large percentage of RVers. While it’s not painful it’s one of the worst feelings and most frightening experiences a person can have. I know. I just lived it.
It’s bad enough when this happens at home, but when you’re on the road in your RV where medical care may be more difficult to obtain, the surroundings and medical personnel unfamiliar, it presents an even more worrisome situation.
Since many RVers are likely to run into this problem I thought an article about it might be of some interest and importance by way of a providing framework to cope should the situation arise. [READ MORE…]
Russ on the Road 